An Evening of Turmoil

In late spring, before school gets out and all the people from town bring their motorboats and jet skis, sitting at the dock on the Lake with a good book or an idea to write about for an hour or so before dusk is a consummate pleasure. Tonight there is a light air, but not one that clears the faint mist that floats above the water. Sitting in a low canvass beach chair, the eye is but a few feet from the surface, and the shoreline opposite divides the image horizontally into the pastel reality of above and the dappled reflection of the hills and sky below. The water sparkles when Sun peeks out from behind a soft sponge canvass of pinks and greys as it settles toward the deep green shadow of the hill off to the right. It is not a static canvass, though, for two bright contrails slowly make their way to the zenith, and if one looks away for a few minutes to read a page or write a line or two, the colors and their arrangement are altered a bit, though you can't see it happening if you watch for it.

Occasionally a car will pass by on the road behind me or on the far shore, and earlier I heard the drone of a motorboat rounding the point about a mile off to the left. But the foreground sounds are entirely natural.

A disorganized and frenetic bevy of mosquitoes are holding a mass orgy above the water just off the end of the dock. They are big, honest mosquitoes, not the pesky little no-seeums that get in your eye and up your nose, and they are clearly not interested in me. Perhaps I am protected by the smoke from my pipe, but I rather think they are more interested in each other. I can clearly see two of them clenched together, well… doing it while hovering in midair. Now there's a pleasure few human lovers enjoy, if in fact mosquitoes enjoy that sort of thing. It's hard to tell. There is, after all, evidence to the contrary, as they seem to be bent on avoiding each other in a sort of miniature Battle of Britain.

Nonetheless, as I have observed, occasionally two of them get together for some fun. I wonder how they choose among so many! Sadly (if one can be sad about the demise of a mosquito) dipping too close to the water more often than not results in a sudden "plink," or better said, "gulp," of the lurking fish that ends it all in sudden blackness and death for the low flyer. Icarus in reverse! Oh, well. Plenty more where that one came from. His absence seems not to be noticed by his rivals and potential lovers.

Ignominious fate, to go like that.

Not so numerous, but infinitely more raucous, is the trio of ducks. It's hard to devine the real story here, but it is clearly a case of two against one. They are all of the same size and coloring (at least in this muted light), so it's not clear whether this is a lovers' triangle or merely some sort of turf war.

One hopes for the former, an impression that grows stronger as I watch the action unfold. They swerve and soar through the air, altering in an instant the roles of the pursued and the pursuer, always the one against the two, quacking their road rage at each other.

Just a few minutes ago, they dropped to the water's surface in pattern - two very to near each other almost simultaneously and then a moment later, the third duck out perhaps twenty yards away. Slowly, the circular ripples they created on landing expand, intersect, and then subsume each other. In turn, the lone wolf and one of the pair, the males, I assume, flap their wings and stand right up in the water in a show of bravado. I wondered if the lady duck admired this competition or if she thought it was silly. Which of her suitors would she really prefer?

Had she given the aggressor any chance? Did she know what she was rejecting, or was she simply taking the safe, conventional approach? I wondered if there were children to consider.

Eventually, the solo duck slowly paddles toward the pair, his circular moat of ripples transformed into a widening vee, weighing his chances in a naval rather than an air attack. The couple, for by now it was clear that they are a couple, eye his approach and discuss strategy, and at just the right moment take off with shouts of derision, leaving the scorned intruder quite

literally in their wake. He pouts and grumbles to himself, utterly rejecting my attempts to send him encouraging duck thoughts... "Other fish in the sea," and all that. After a few minutes of moping around in circles, he too takes wing, whether in renewed pursuit or in search of more willing prospects I cannot tell, for they are long gone.

It is nearly dark, and I am reluctantly preparing to leave - folding up the WalMart 2.0 diopters I have come to need for reading and dropping them into my pocket where they will accumulate dust and a nice patina of minute scratches from my pen and Zippo. Fill up a pipe for the road and dog-ear the right page in the book.

And just as I'm about to hoist myself out of the beach chair, one of the elusive blue herons that nest in one of the few remaining protected areas of the shore glides in from the gloom. I'm pretty sure he's a blue heron, although I'm no ornithologist. In truth, he's decidedly more grey than blue, but use your imagination. After all, how impressive can a merely grey heron be? He looks for all the world like a miniature pterodactyl soaring in effortlessly from out of nowhere. Long neck and legs stretched out behind, with a wingspan that would get him noticed in any Jurassic Park movie. He circles around effortlessly, casing the joint, checking me out.

For a moment, I think he's going to dive on a fish, but then he pulls up, circles around a few more times, and glides smoothly onto the water, the picture of a machine executing exactly the maneuver it has been designed to do - all grace and efficiency. I settle back to watch him, and he glides along in a sort of skater's figure eight, creating an intricate expanding pattern of ripples. It is almost as though he is aware of his art, painting subtle nuances of color with what's left of the sky's palette into an impressionist heron's rendering of of the Lake he sees from his front porch. I am sure he is aware of me,

for with each turn he takes away from me, he looks back over his shoulder to see if I am watching.

It occurs to me that I haven't read much tonight, nor have I written at all. I come here prepared to do both, for it is a good place to be for clearing the mind. I consider that everything I have seen and heard in the last hour is eternal - going farther back in time than man, and probably that far forward as well. Moreover, it is happening all the time.

When the boats and water skiers crisscross the Lake, everything that is eternal goes into hiding, to emerge when it thinks no one is looking. It is like the stars that are in the sky during the day - present even though you can't see them. How blessed am I to glimpse this world of peace and turmoil! I'm quite sure that most reasonable people would, should I be so foolish to tell of the characters in tonight's drama, think I was making mountains out of molehills. I think perhaps we sometimes reverse our mountains and molehills. Maybe that's the lesson for tonight; maybe why I didn't read or write. There was something more important for me to do. No wonder the blue heron watches me suspiciously!

Just as I'm wondering where his mate is, she joins him, they have a little chat, and take off again.