Editor’s note: This commentary is by Walt Amses, a writer who lives in North Calais.
As the loon and I stare each other down, I note that his eyes look like he’s been snorting crystal meth, presumably to remain alert for the ever circling eagle, who’s got his own eyes focused on the possibility of a delicious loon-chick-filet, in a moment of parental distraction. His penetrating gaze follows me paddling silently away. Only when he’s certain I’m not much of a threat does he vanish beneath the surface, once more continuing his fishing expedition.
The cool respite of the pond and its seasonal inhabitants suggests all is well this week after Memorial Day, and even though I know it’s not, right now, I’m not too bothered. I’ll take anything I can get at this point and what the water offers is pretty near perfect. We’re in the middle of the best stretch of weather in months, days on end of blissfully blue skies streaked with cirrus clouds … “mare’s tails” … gently stirring awake the hillsides, now an iridescent variety of greens that vibrate in brilliant sunshine. Ruffed grouse are drumming in the woods; frogs are trilling along the shoreline and newts, snakes and salamanders are crossing the far less traveled, winding, dirt road.
The straightforward clarity of the encounter, floating nearly alone on a 135-acre body of pristine water in northern Vermont stands in stark contradiction to life on much of the planet as the world comes to terms with the fragility of being human. The implications of our contentedly gliding our kayaks around the perimeter are not lost on us; tens of millions would trade places with us in a heartbeat. And we’re barely a half mile from our front door. The last month or so it’s become a joke that 37 years of living this remotely is finally paying off.
But there’s no denying that floating on the water like this also has a surrealistic quality, perhaps it always has or maybe we’re just more aware of it now. It feels timeless. Other than the few vehicles at the fishing access, the camps and summer cabins peppering the shoreline, several are many decades old, offer no hint of what century we’re in, which feels quite strange at first, but eventually better than it should. Our safety may be an illusion, but it’s comforting nonetheless. Languidly easing the sleek boats forward takes minimal energy but our repetitive movement engages us in the slow, easy rhythm of the afternoon.
As all the possibilities of impending summer reveal themselves around us, we effortlessly land in the ever-elusive, present moment that mystics, philosophers, prophets and gurus sanctify as a holy-grail-level, life quest. The plague has eradicated our notion of time, if we ever had one at all, forcing the issue, galvanizing our focus and inspiring our own philosophical meandering. What does time really mean? Do we control it or vice versa? Does it exist at all? Regarding the latter, Albert Einstein weighed in succinctly: “Time is an illusion.”
Although much of what the patent clerk turned quantum physicist theorized sounds opaque to a science neophyte, the pond certainly has a dream-like quality about it these days and things we’ve done for years, like anticipating the annual signs of nature’s evolution and observing those incremental changes, coalesce handily with Einstein’s reverence for the natural world: “Look deeply into nature and you will understand everything better.” He also mused on solitude — painful in youth but “delicious in years of maturity” and believed that the most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious.
And nothing on a northern lake is more mysterious than the common loon, which is anything but common. Hearing its piercing midnight call for the first time is like nothing else — it stops a person cold. One of the exquisite pleasures of living on a small elevation of land, between two mountain lakes, is lying in bed on a summer night, windows wide, listening to an eerie, distant serenade, echoing through the trees as you drop off to sleep.
Loons are excellent swimmers as well, but do their fishing out of sight, clandestinely honing in on and easily apprehending a variety of fish and aquatic life. Much bigger than most people realize, an adult loon can weigh 12 to 14 pounds and have a wingspan nearing 5 feet, which facilitates flying up to 75 miles an hour and 500 miles in a single day. Once a loon chick hatches, its webbed feet might not touch solid ground for several years.
Built for swimming and diving, loons are clumsy on land, barely able to stand with their legs situated so far back on their heavily boned bodies. Once the chicks take flight in late fall, often weeks after their parents have departed, they’ll spend three to five years off the Atlantic Coast, eventually returning instinctively to the place where they were born.
Back at the car, tangled tie-down straps, a thousand tiny airborne carnivores and a back spasm or two combine to quickly tweak the hypnotic spell as we’re quickly reminded that real-world circumstances may not be so nurturing as long, slow paddle over a pristine body of healing water. All the black flies in the world can’t take back the last hour or so; that’s ours forever. The dilemma on dry land though, is — like everyone else — wondering what the future will bring. Einstein can provide some guidance here as well: “I never think of the future, it comes soon enough.”
