Same old lake, fresh new season

It is late September and the day is achingly beautiful. The sun is rising, the mist lifting. The wind is down and in my canoe I slide north along the shore. I have no destination except eternity.

At this hour and this time I am the only boat on the lake, but not the only life. A kingfisher rattles out of the back channel behind the island on which I live. I know the young loon is out there fishing and, through the mist, I can hear the flocks of geese heading south: some to migration, others to termination in the marshes where the hunters wait. Like me, the hunters are up early.

The geese are not the only high flyers. Already jet trails are drawn in the sky and by the end of today they, or others more recent, will still be hanging, ragged but motionless.

I glide across the mouth of a small bay and head east down a long finger of the lake. There are cottages along the north shore and though most