The sky cleared last night and I saw for the first time an honored member of the lakeshore tableau, the moon. She wasn’t in her full glory; she presented only her profile. Yet, she was brilliant. Not only did she fill the landscape with her cool, white light, the bedroom glowed with her presence. I turned over and went back to sleep with a satisfied smile
Yesterday, a crew of six men spent ten minutes removing the winter wreckage that was strewn over the lakefront and reinstalled the dock and boat lift. Waking up to the sight of the platform hovering about Lady Lake reminds me that summer is close at hand. Some of the summer visitors have all ready settled in. Within twenty minutes after the dock was set up, four Mallards strutted over the wood planks. Later in the afternoon, one of the guests was diving off the boat lift. Now, this morning, another guest is sunning himself on the preferred section of the dock for most of the morning. With the leafing of the deciduous trees and bushes, with the cries of the loons, and scampering of the squirrels and chipmunks, the summer routine has settled in.
Living alone at the cabin allows me to enrobe myself with silence. I was never one to have television or radio on much of the time. I’ve grown accustomed to the quiet. In that quiet, my ears are attentive to slight sound. When the crew put in the dock, I was napping and the slight rustlings in the silence woke me. Also, I’ve become aware of how heavy footed squirrels are. Many times I would think a person was walking around the cabin on the deck only to realize that it was just one of critters running to its morning catch of peanuts. Two nights ago, I heard the “bingadee, bangadee, bingadee” across the roof. The sound intrigued my mind in the midst of the night.
My human ego questions the right of the critter to trespass on my roof, my property. Yet for the critter, the roof is nothing more than a road to get home, no different than a tree branch. The cabin in integrated within his life and his known environment. Does a tree take offense at the squirrel using its limbs as a path home? In that moment, Mother Nature reminded me of the egocentric limitations of my universe and my understanding of all the worlds in life around me.
Tags: Crosslake, Crosslake cabin, Minnesota, Minnesota cabin, Personal journal
