TURKEYS & LOONS

I drove all day yesterday; needed headlights the last half hour. The driveway was fresh plowed but in the meadow, snow is waist deep. Another inch or two of lake effect fell by bed time. This morning I disturbed two turkeys who were pecking in the driveway. They were between my truck and the barn and didn’t see me until I was close. If I’d bent over and pecked at the ground they might have let it pass. But there was a hurried set of muffled wing beats and they lifted off, up into the trees. Thirty feet up they perched, one in one tree, one in another, observing me as if I were the wild one. 

The drive into town was slippery, anti-lock brakes chattering at every stop, and I was careful. After paper work at the bank and a hair cut, I came outside under blue sky and sunlight. I realized I didn’t need the jacket and I noticed the sound of tires on wet streets and water in drains and gutters. I was going to head for the coffee shop but decided to go to the lake shore first. I’ve walked that beach and pier so many times you might think I’d get enough but it’s a place with many faces, it's always new and I never tire of it. 

Hundreds of people were exploring the beach with coats over their arms and cameras in hand. It’s been a cold, wet winter here and wave action piles ice up on the beach, then freeze creates more ice and it gets added to the stack. Up and down the beach, ice is piled up 20-25 feet above the water line and everything is frozen solid. Small, dark pools interrupt the icy white at the river’s mouth but it’s a quarter mile out, beyond the light house before you see stretches of open water. Walking on lake ice is safer than navigating the slippery pier so as far as you can see, down the beach and out toward Wisconsin, dark specks move around and over upheaved, freshwater icebergs, locked in place until something warm and enduring happens. 

I was up on the lighthouse deck, looking north across the channel to the jetty on the other side. A congregation of loons dotted the water of an open pool and I listened to see if I could hear them. Loons are among the oldest birds alive. Their history goes back 50 million years and they’re still singing their eerie, wonderful songs. They may sound like laughter or a wolf’s howl, even yodeling during mating season. Today it was just little whistles and chirps. I remember a Canadian fishing trip where there was an abundance of both, wolves and loons. Sitting on the dock in the wee hours, we would listen, look at each other and roll our eyes. “What do you think?” Well, I think it’s been a great day, being blessed with the presence of turkeys in the morning and loons in the afternoon.