Your Canoe Will Wait
Reflections on a still lake
I’ve written here about my year in Sherwood Forest, but I had forgotten how it felt living near the lake. Today I found notes I made at the time. A primary source helps you make sense of the past, historical or personal.
The notes describe a turning point when everything was absolutely still. I had left my job and all the town noise and busyness, taken my savings, and rented a house in the woods. For four seasons I lived by the lake through all its moods. By the next summer, it was time for my new life in town to begin.
Your Canoe Will Wait
I often wake early to make coffee while waiting for enough daylight to walk the few yards to the lake to see what’s new. Sights, sounds, rain, a bird or animal, a budding plant.
Once it was 10 degrees and the lake was covered with ice. By the next week it had melted, and the still surface of the water reflected a pair of crows flying under a few clouds. Above the clouds, a faint crescent moon.
I’ve seen low-lying mists swirl over the water. Another morning, fog hid everything beyond the canoes tied onshore. It hid the lake, its fish, the woods, the hills and the sky.
The sound of a distant woodpecker is enough. Or the first songbird just before spring. Animal tracks in wet sand on the dam recall the night.
Today a breeze ripples the water. In April it swept yellow pollen into the lake’s southwest corner.
One morning in March I kept my appointment, waiting in the cold air. Would it be the sound of geese on the lower lake, an unusual cloud, a new poem?
But there was nothing, not a sound, not a sight. And that was enough.
What if you were paddling along for years in a canoe, say, of routine living, and one foggy day your canoe suddenly bumps ashore. Will you get out, make a trail and go exploring? What will you discover? If you tie it to a tree, your canoe will wait.
Lovely, lyrical reflection!
Beautiful. Thank you.