Summer idyll

Reflections

Whirligig beetles and water striders. Who doesn’t love insects that skate around on calm stretches of marshes and streams? Dragging silver ripples behind them as they dart across the glassy surface, or mess up crisp reflections of trees, rocks and clouds when they race about in a frenzy, disturbed by the canoe as you paddle past.

Full summer. Hot August day. Just picture it. When you’re lucky enough to be with whirligigs you’re in a backwater somewhere far from traffic and crowds, and not far from water lilies. And when you rest your paddle across the gunnels, pause and soak it all in, a dragonfly lands on the dripping blade, showing off the blue and yellow markings on its abdomen.

Most of the water striders I’ve seen in my life have been from the bow of a canoe, on dozens of lakes and rivers. Lucky me, immigrating to Canada! But today I’m sitting on a rock watching whirligigs play on the deep dark pool beside me. A sloping chunk of pink granite I’ve dived off and sunbathed on many a time in years gone by. My dear friend Austin, who has owned the cabin here for fifty years, invited me up for the weekend, before he lets the place go. We’ve been reveling in the peace and beauty, reminiscing about decades past and how blessed we are to still be here.

I lived in the cabin alone one precious, pivotal summer—no hydro, no phone, no propane, but a wealth of nature—so once knew every inch and cranny. I’ve just made my way past patches of maiden-hair ferns and rich green mosses down the wooded path to the river, glad for the sturdy railing recently installed to help aging bones and balance. And stepped onto the rock with caution, surprised at how steep it is, and much smaller than I remember. But still there, as it always was and always will be, bulging out into the current of the beautiful Big East, a special place to wait and watch, listen and dream.

An ebony jewelwing flutters by along the shore as I linger here. A clubtail dragonfly is laying eggs in the shallows across the stream, touching the tip of her abdomen to the water time after time after time. I’ll never forget watching a massive snapping turtle swim slowly by over there, a dark form in the tannin-rich depths.

Sitting high above the river on the porch of the cabin is every bit as mesmerizing. Hummingbirds buzz about below the railing, fighting over the bergamot blossoms someone wisely planted there.  With perfect precision one pokes its pointy bill into a fuschia-coloured tube, then zips to the next, and the next, until a rival charges in and chases it off. A white admiral likes to sun itself on the black-eyed susans, fanning its black-and-white butterfly wings, and I saw an Atlantis fritillary alight atop a red maple sapling growing up beside the cabin wall.

A welcome breeze rustles leaves of trembling aspens reaching up among the spruces, pines and balsam fir, in sync with the endless murmur of the rapids below. Apart from the high-pitched call of a broad-winged hawk and the croak of a raven, the scream of blue jays is just about all that disturbs the peace, now that warbler families are fattening up for their long flights south, the males too busy to sing. I counted 32 songbirds crossing the river yesterday, two or three at a time, and diving into the safety of the alders, a mixed flock already on the move. And this morning, in a clearing at the top of the hill, identified five or six warblers in their confusing fall plumage, yellow-rumped, Nashville and chestnut-sided among them.

I could sit here forever on this rock, breathing in the perfume of pines and gazing upstream, waiting for something to swim around the bend there. Otter? Muskrat? Moose? A few fallen leaves float by, the first of thousands that will start any day now, golden on the black water of the Big East. Can you get anything done, distracted by so many wonders?

Don’t try. Just be here, grateful, sitting on a rock and watching whirligigs.

Water strider/Photo by Mike McEvoy

Maiden-hair ferns

The cabin

High above the river

Writing on the porch

Gazing upstream

Dreaming on the rock