Storm Lake, Sunday morning after the election

Reflections on a calm lake

There’s no one up and about yet, but it’s just light out. It’s the best time for Hank the dog (aka Sir Dog aka His Dogness) and me to be on a solitary walk, tramping the few blocks to the lake. We’ve finally had a well-timed, post-harvest rain. Most of the leaves have dropped by now; they lie matted and sodden on the sidewalk and lawns.

This fall, the foliage was on a slow roll that hasn’t quite finished. In the next block over, a tree of flame still holds most of its fiery brilliance. In the opposite direction another block over, sun-gold leaves cling to a maple. Maybe it’s because I’m getting older or maybe it’s because I’m walking more or maybe it’s because I rent and don’t have to do the raking, but just to notice trees in their season is a rich reward.

As we reach the lake, the water is calm. The air is calm, too. It restores my soul, just like the psalm says. Have I lost you, reader? I promise, this is not a Sunday morning devotional. I’m a recovering Calvinist, and I no longer attend church, but you’ll never get those verses completely scrubbed from my synapses.

Off to the left I notice a solitary waterfowl. There’s never just one bird on the lake, especially during migration. This bird has a long neck, tilted at an odd angle, but it’s not a goose or a swan. I’m not a birder, but this creature seems wholly other. We walk to the jetty, a place where my children used to run. As the dog and I reach its tip, I peer again at the bird. All I see are its head and neck. I could swear its body is submerged.

The dog is focused on the boulders at the jetty’s base, more content to see what previous fisherfolk have left for him to scrounge. He crunches on some small item (I hope it’s not a chicken bone), then licks a rock. The bird on the water is out of his purview, for sure.

Suddenly, the water breaks, and the bird slightly lifts its wings. I see long, dark gray, heavily textured feathers on a gangly, folded skeleton. As far as I’m concerned this could just as well be an alien, so unusual is this creature and where is its posse? Just as quickly, the bird melts back into the water. He seems unperturbed and unhurried, with no apparent game plan. I hear ya, buddy. A few days ago, geese flew overhead, but they were pointing north. Nothing has made sense for days.

My high school friend, Karen, and her husband, Terry Swope, are avid bird watchers. When I describe what I saw, she sends an allaboutbirds.org link for the Double-crested Cormorant, and bingo, that’s the bird! “On the water, they sit low” reads the entry. So, it wasn’t just my imagination or bad eyes, and Karen tells me that sighting it was quite a find. And so it was, on shallow Storm Lake, on a tranquil Sunday morning, just the dog and me.