Sunday, August 21, 2011

The Green Grass of Home

           After a couple of stormy days fraught with rain and wind, we awoke to a sunny sky and calm winds.  We paddled out in the kayaks on flat water that invited our gaze deep into it's depths.   The morning light and perhaps the fresh rain made the water clear and I could down through six feet of water to make out details of the bottom.   Madelyn noted how far out into the lake the vegetation grows, reaching up through the depths to reach the sun.   Not only do plants like water lilly growth up through the lake to the surface, but the very bottom of much of this part of the lake is as green with plants as my lawn.   East along south shore of the lake, the vegetation changes.  In front of our place, horsetail grows up creating a fringe around our dock.  people comment that our when we sit on the dock, it appears that we are sitting on a grassy lawn.   As I paddle east I notice that the vegetation changes from horsetail to grass, and out from shore, barely pushing through the water surface is another plant whose name is lost to me but it looks like the classic aquarium vegetation.  several variaties of pad lilies seem to be scattered about the whole southern part of the lake but not in any density.   It is easy to look at the aquatic plants and think there is only horsetail and lilly pads. But in reality there are dozens of different plants growing in this lake and this morning they are all so easy to see in detail.  A few years ago, a survey of aquatic plants in the Kenai Peninsula lakes found twenty-nine flowering aquatic plants.

        The water is so clear today, it's like heavy rain had changed the water in the lake.   The bright, fresh-scrubbed feeling of the world after a rain seems emphasized this morning on Bear Lake and the red salmon, the tail end of the run,  are brilliant red in crystal water of an August morning in the shadow of Mt Tiehacker.

       

Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Changing times

august 16,   10:30 pm clear and still.



At 10:30 we are watching the coming dark dusk fall on Bear Lake, because August is the month of transition to fall.  In July, the evenings were endless and until midnight there was little change in the amount of light.  But now the light at ten pm is less than that at nine and we can feel the cool of the evening  sooner.  In lower latitudes the world is experiencing the height of summer.  Not here.  Even though today was warm and sunny.   The leaves are starting to rattle not rustle, the fireweed are bloomed to the top or nearly so, and the giant puchki leaves are starting to turn yellow.   Yes, winter is still along way off, but fall has quietly begun.  Here at the lake, the aquaculture crew broke down their fish camp at creek today, only the stragglers of the salmon run are left, and the long-quiet loons have started having guests from other lakes and taking noisey flights of their own.  Fewer salmon are jumping, more are spawning along the south lakeshore where the shallow water and gravel bed seem to be ideally suited to this process.  As a result, every night the bears are wading this shallow stretch of lake shore catching and eating salmon.  This week we had one at our dock splashing and thrashing about in the horsetail and grasses of our shallows.  Our stretch of lake doesn't have a gravel bottom so the salmon aren't spawning here nor do they linger.  The only attraction a bear might encounter here are muskrat.  Maybe these little fellows were the prey that evening.  We don't know for sure, we just had the sound of a rowdy bear.  We were surprised that is bear was about 100 feet away but we could hear it breathing, panting as it waded off into the night.


Thursday, August 4, 2011

August 4 - Its still raining - Sounds of summer

Inspired to do this by a program I heard on NPR/talkeetna radio while at the cabin at Pear Lake - outside Trapper Creek, ALaska.  Very near the scene of the trajic air crash this week ....
Sounds of summer
The smack of my hand as I dive for an elusive, blood blogged mosquito
The glut of profanities when I miss....
The sqeal of joy when I get it......
The helicoptering twitter of dragonflies - the dual clatter when they couple in flight
The cupping sound of a clean catch with oar or paddle on the lake....
The dribble of water off my paddle....
The buzz of a bee about my head....
The whir of a tern in a steep dive....
the laughing of a loon to its mate, the scream of the alarm call as the eagle draws near, the mournful wail late at night as I pad my way to the oouthouse.....
The SOft lapping of water against the alumininum skin of the canoepushed along on a cat's paw breeze...
The siren call of the Yellowlegs, defending its territory.....
The sizzle of burgers on an open fire.......
The clatter and crunch of paper as you dig deeper into the potatoe chip bag.......
the slam of a screen door on a spring hinge.......
The scrape and clunk of the well pump handle.......
The slurp and suckle on the first bite of a tight nectarine.....
ANd a swweet sound from my past far from the late - the tinkling notes of the icecream truck playing simple ditties as they round the corner, where I stand rapt, clutching my special quarter.....ah summer!  myw

August 2 and here comes the rain - and a new visitor

Well it couldn't last forever - August 1 the curtain came down, the sky sputtered and our first real rain in 6 weeks followed.  Gotta love AUgust - its classic.  Overnight a few willows yellowed marking the summer slowdown. 
Ah, but the lake is warm and cloudy skies bring calm water and Nancy and I had a great row.  We could skull the lake at all angles for a change, not working against the south or north wind.  We spotted for bears but only saw a crazy lab in the bear zone, intent on chasing every boat that went by. thought at first it was a black bear but no blackie would survive the concentration of Brownies around here.\
And alas - Nancy spotted a pair of marbled murrelets - I see them every year, usually about this time, always out in the middle, always an unmistakable site - nothing else on the lake like them.  My theory is they nest nearby....maybe one day I'll be lucky and find a nest.