Looking northward just after putting in
Looking northward just after putting in
We arrive at the launch area at about 8:30. Judging from the number of cars parked at the launch site, Long Lake must be very crowded; we actually have to park at the far end of the further parking lot! It is about 8:50 when we put in; three motorboats carrying men we assume to be duck hunters launch at about the same time, and within a few minutes we are passed by a fourth.
Taking into account that it is November, I couldn’t ask for a better day. The sun shines shines brightly down from a gentle blue sky and the chill wind, though not brutal, gives me plenty of motivation to paddle vigorously. Wispy but not insubstantial grey-bottomed clouds hang over the water and the mountains to the north, forming a shifting patchwork there. Jeff points out the amazing visibility; the features of those mountains are crisply defined despite their distance.
As I gaze at the woods on the western shore I am suddenly struck by the difference in the character of the woods before and after autumn. Both the robust greenness of the summer and the fall’s riot of flaming colors present a sense of profusion; of both color and form billowing out in all directions. But now all the trees have lost their leaves and both bank and forest are reduced to a haze of grey cut by the stark white vertical lines of birches. And it occurs to me for the first time that perhaps that’s one of the reasons that fall and winter affect my mood so much. During the summer as the trees effusively pour themselves upward and outward they seem like an expression of the earth’s longing; an extension of its exhuberance. But it can’t maintain the effort and so it turns away from us and casts its gaze to the heavens, and we are left rejected for a season.
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