Life at the Lake

Lake Ketchum Art Galleries is another website of ours: Click on Art Gallery to go there. Be sure to visit it, if you enjoy contemporary art.
It features painting , drawing, digital graphics, and photography.

We also have a literary website, Kingfisher Journal, which you might enjoy. Go to Kingfisher Journal.
Its content changes regularly. It is published in four issues per year, but an issue may have several editions, so please keep coming back. The site emphasizes poetry, fiction, movies, and literary criticism. There is usually a fine painting on its masthead. Often the art is by a regional artist.

Please note: Life at the Lake is archived. (See below, lower column right.) Click on the hyperlink to visit some of our older entries.

Some Representative Views of the Lake and Its Environs

The sun has not yet set, but already the moon has risen in a scudded sky

A pair of wood ducks on our porch rail, where we have a feeder placed specially for them. The only duck with prehensile feet, they can (and do) perch in adjacent cedar trees. These shy ducks will not be approached and feed only when left entirely alone.

Facing West, a brilliant October sunset holds the eye long after the sun is gone to bed

Nearby tulip fields of Skagit Valley. Actually our lake straddles two watersheds, the Skagit and Stillaguamish. But the former is more famous

.
Four domestic geese arrange themselves in eye-pleasing fashion

Ah, my boat and dock, though I used the motor
rarely and prefer to row, especially when I fish

Early moonset on the lake, a pretty time of day

Yes, it is I, with a bigger-than-average rainbow. Most our trout are planted small, but grow an inch or so a month during the summer, and by fall are of
respectable size. We always let them go.

Life At The Lake

553

Pretty, eh? This tulip lasted longer than it had any right to last, but it too is gone, along with most the other tulips. Now a steady rain is knocking them all to the ground and the petals are disintegrating rapidly, as are the red rhododendrons that were so splendid. But there are yellow and orange rhododendrons starting to break out in blooms, along with tiny azaleas in a host of colors.

Fishing pressure has been light, and the few fishers on the lake have not exactly been knocking them dead. Which is all to the good for the rest of us, for most of the trout will be left to be caught (and hopefully released) during the long season ahead.

No baby wood ducks yet, but mallards with their initial large broods are showing. My wife thinks the wood ducklings will be kicked out of the nesting boxes about mid-month, which is only a few days hence.

552

A week ago, exactly, the Fish and Wildlife folks planted the lake with 3k rainbow trout that run 7.5 to, oh, 9.5 inches in length. They are feisty little fish, with dark speckles on silver backs with an appearance of the same coloration as salmon in saltwater.

Immediately the fishermen appeared. Fishing, however, was slow, as is most years, on the heels of the plant. I caught some that first day, and the next, and soon developed the necessary touch that such trout require in order to hook them and must be relearned again each year. Now they are acclimated to this lake and travel around its perimeter in schools. When a school is in your neighborhood (so to speak) the fishing can be tricky but excellent, if you are able to detect the strike and hook them.

Otherwise the fishing will be very slow for you. But the good news in all of this is, the fewer trout hooked and killed, the longer the good fishing will last for those of us who put out fish back, where they can be caught again and again.

Cherry trees are in bloom and many of the rhododendrons, including the big, spectacular red ones. And the various maple trees in the front yard are newly leafed and lovely.

Up closer than I will ever get. A file photo from Google.

551

One more duck picture, okay?

We now have a common loon in residence at the lake. He flew in a few days ago, and shows no sign of leaving, but who knows? Loons are solitary creatures. I'd always thought they were shy, but they aren't. I walked out on my dock and there he stood, or rather floated, about seventy-five feet away, bold as (what? a loon?) brass. He rode low in the water, but all the tight black and white speckles on his back were abundantly clear at that distance.

A moment later he dove. A neat maneuver. He tucked his head in and with a minimum splash disappeared. I watched for him to appear again, widening the circles of my gaze a few feet every few seconds until at long last he appeared again about 125 feet away, perhaps farther.

He remained totally oblivious of me, but I wonder. Wasn't it all an act? I mean, I was a bit of a threat, but not really much of one. I walk on feet and am a poor swimmer. And later on the same day I went back out on the dock and there he was again, about the same short distance away as before, but at a slightly different angle.

I wondered then if I might not tame him (I only presumed he was a he) by degrees, day by day, if only he would consent to hang around my lake and dock.

Tame is not the right word, of course. Acclimate him to my presence, I mean, so he wouldn't continue to dive and swim off at his modest, unfrightened pace, day after day. I think not, though. The most I might hope for is a repetition of the same slow departure from his modest distance daily to a greater one.

That would be enough to satisfy me, but I have a hunch it won't work out that way. What will happen is the reverse image of his arrival. He will one day simply not be afloat, way out there on the lake, as he was at first, nor closer in, as he was, the next few days. He will simply disappear--he with the speckled back and big shoulders and lovely wake.

And then it will be as though there were never a common loon on the lake, this year, and it was all a loony dream of mine. But I know better.

550

Morning bird count on the lake: four green-winged teal (an unusual visitor, and very shy; pictured is a male, and we had three of these, plus a female, far out into the lake and probably brought here by the lingering black fly hatch from a day or two ago. Two female buffleheads, two male northern shovelers, and the usual mallards, pied-billed grebes, and lesser scaups.

More important, perhaps, is that a solitary male wood duck came to the feeder. Haven't seen any alone before this year, which probably indicates that the heavily-feeding females are now on the nest. They have been eating like crazy in preparation for laying and nesting.

The ducklings will be kicked out of the nest one day after hatching, able to sort of fly and swim. A female will lay plus or minus a dozen eggs, and we might expect a similar number of hatchlings. Meanwhile, the makes will begin their molt, during which they will be unable to fly and are completely vulnerable to attack.

Fortunately, they will go somewhere remote and we shall not see them again--probably not for the remainder of the year.

549

What--aside from crocuses--are the current signs of spring?

Willows and salmonberry blooming. Tulips. No daffodils yet, not here, at any rate, but soon there will be fields of them, down by Joyce's. Camellias almost bloomed out. Skunk cabbage.

More to come, as we old journalists say.

548

Have I said enough about wood ducks? I'd thought I had, enough for this year, anyway, but apparently I haven't. Bear with me a bit longer. . . .

I've only seen bird mating once before, years ago, when my anchored rowboat across the lake was visited by a spirited pair of great blue herons, who promptly went into their mating act in the scrub on shore. It was as though I were being attacked from the sky by two pterodactyls. There is nothing kind or sexy about the mating act, I soon learned. They crashed to the ground, emitting loud squawks and screeches. All right, screams.

So, two nights ago some wood ducks came to the new feeder on the end of the dock. Okay. A new large number--eight-- arrived in pairs. I thought they were four breeding pairs but, no, one pair was rogue males. One of the usual hens, attended by her mate, went to the feeder, then, having eaten her fill, she fluttered down to the water. Quickly the two rogues went after her.

"Rape" is the word I'm looking for. They chased her, with him in pursuit, under the floats of the dock, along the shoreline, and up on the beach. The other pairs flew off. She tried to hide from the violent onslaught, but first one, then the other male, took her down and mounted her. Her mate went after them. It was not a pretty sight. Back and forth she went, under the floats, and back, for what seemed to me a long encounter each time.

They flattened her. He kept after them and eventually banished them, hissing and fluttering his wings, beak extended. They few off as individuals. The lake became calm. She swam toward the center of the lake, quickly. Her mate followed tightly, as though they were one. Now all the ducks were gone from my dock area.

The scene has not repeated. I don't want it to. I think next time I might fly out the door and down to the dock in order to try and end it in mad pursuit. Yes, indeed I shall. But perhaps the breeding is over for the year and she will retire to her nest in a wood box in Brewer's Woods (or so I used to call it). And soon there will be ducklings on the lake to report on again, after a total, alarming absence of ducklings last year.

And of course I shall report here on this website when and if the event happens. I greatly look forward to it.

Ah, such excitement, living on a lowland lake!

547

Yesterday had ice on the gate at dawn, but a bright sun all afternoon. Norma painted me some flat boards for acrylics and set them out to dry. Perhaps it was the intense white color, but the five boards soon attracted some small flying insects. A few got their feet stuck in the wet paint and unwillingly remained there as I approached and closely inspected them. They proved to be dark caddis flies, about size 12 in fly hooks, (if someone were to tie imitations. (See below.)

Most flew off as I waved a hand to shoo them away, but one or two remained, and when I waved the back of that hand to dislodge them, well, they smeared. An insect has guts, I was reminded, and it took some warm water and a rag to clean the boards back to pristine painting surfaces. At dusk I took them back inside to continue drying. Today I will paint them additionally with gesso and give them a light sanding. Then they will be suitable for painting a picture.

More views of the lake

An artist's view of the lake, with the island to the left, scattered conifers overhead, a ruddy sun, and of course a rainbow trout swimming free