Life On the Lake 

Dedicated to the Joys of Waterside Living

Great woodsy picture, isn't it? Wish I'd taken it. It was taken by a man named Benjamin Bensnyder, who works for the Seattle PI newspaper. Appropriate for this time of the year, though

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Hot days and nights that don't cool down until morning. If then. Here at the lake it is a bit cooler than in town, Seattle, where our son and many of our friends live. And they go to parks or the beach in the evening. And we go on walks through the woods. Only the woods, here in the country is getting farther and farther away, as clutches of condos and housing developments go up. Nobody is immune from development, and the vacant that fringe the lake are steadily disappearing, year by year.

We have been here nine years this month. It is not an eternity, but nonetheless a long time. How many houses have gone up in that length of time? I'm not sure. A dozen, perhaps. And how  many buildable lots are left? Perhaps half a dozen. And our lakeside community now numbers about 85.

Too many, too many, sigh some of us. Now, what we need is a bigger lake. And this country abounds in them. Large lakes, like Whatcom, Big,  Samish, Goodwin. But they too are getting over-built, because so many people seek the beauty of water. Not to mention its cooling properties.

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This is about the size of this year's bluegill crop, as of a month ago, when they stopped feeding so much on zooplankton and began their adult diet of insects. Their growth now is rapid, and last night, between innings of the Mainers' game with Minnesota (which they lost in the 14th inning, long after we'd gone to bed), I caught four youngsters, six to eight inches in length.

The take to a nymph (#14 Hare's Ear, for those who care) was subtle and hard to detect; I missed many takes, I am sure, and sometimes found myself striking back too late. Other times I sensed, rather than felt or saw some small motion of the line, and struck hard, feeling a prick and miss, but occasionally, coming up with a firm connection.

This is very satisfying, and what lies at the heart of flyfishing  for trout and spinyrays, and brings back memories of fall fishing for trout in Seattle's Green Lake. These were the product of a May plant of rainbow fry, and grew at a rate of two inches a month until November, when cold temperatures shut down their evening feeding period to only a few minutes, then to none at all.

The lake is warm, as warm as the air, and all sensible fish (especially trout) are huddled near cooler springs, where there is still some dissolved oxygen left in the water. But the perch and bluegills can't resist the evening insect hatch of midges and their larvae, the chironomids, struggling to the surface.

Now I am being rewarded for the care with which I treated their nests, all spring, with the ferocious male in attendance and chasing away all intruders, including myself. I pussyfooted around the nests and took extreme care of where I beached and rested my rowboat. And this is how I am being rewarded:

What a beautiful, feisty little fish. Ours are more bright yellow, with the telltale blue/black patch still on the gill cover.

The rod is a three-weight, the line floating. Of course each fish is carefully released from a barbless hook and returned to the water. But our brief acquaintance is meaningful and memorable to me.

"Difficulty rewarded." This is what lies at the heart of flyfishing.

Admittedly a poor picture, but to capture a wood duck hen and her brood at all with a camera is no mean feat.

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This may be her second brood, this year, or even her third. Which is good news from the ducky kingdom, where wood ducks in recent years have barely been able to replicate themselves.

There are seven ducklings gathered here, and the hen is teaching them to hop up on my dock, which is a good 18inches above the water. In doing so, they strengthen their wings and in time this exercise will teach them how to fly and, in a month or two, migrate to California, as do so many of the lake inhabitants.

Meanwhile, earlier broods (what remains, for there is much attrition due to varmints) swim about the lake, devouring the last of the duckweed, which was poisoned with fluridone a couple of weeks ago. It is shrinking in upon itself rapidly and its diameter is about an eighth of what it was then.

Duckweed is a nuisance to the human occupants of the lake, and it ruins their waterside activities, such as swimming. In some years past, the lake was literally covered with a carpet of duckweed. People hated it, but the lake drew large flocks of American widgeons to feast upon it.

I miss them, I do, but I like a clean-looking lake as well as anyone. And next year, our pesticide applicator tells us, the rules will change because of EPA loosening. Roundup and/or Rodeo can be sprayed on lakeside vegetation, because it is deemed harmless, or of low harm, to bodies of water not housing anadromous fishes, such as the endangered Chinook salmon and bull trout.

So we may be rid of spike rush next year, and various other species of pondweed that choke the shoreline and hinder people from utilizing the land/water interface; that is, the shoreline.

Another word for it is the beach. People here, and elsewhere, import clean white sand and create beaches, where none ever existed in nature. Lowland lakes are naturally choked with weeds and plants and trees.

But people have in their heads visions of some mythic lake. It is clear and bright and ringed with sand. Lake Chelan is like that, and people make pilgrimages to Eastern Washington just to experience their ideal made real. Then they come home to Ketchum and try to recreate it, spending lots of money in the process.

With no sustainable success, I might add. The lake strives to return to its natural condition. But people keep getting in the way.

Late watercolor by Paul Cézanne

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Peter Schjeldahl, art critic for The New Yorker, compares and contrasts Cézanne and Camille Pissarro, who together comprise an exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in NYC. (July 11 & 18, 2005 issue.) He quotes from Cézanne as having said, "Teachers [in art schools] are all castrated bastards and assholes. They have no guts."

Where Schjeldahl gets this quote is not mentioned, and I suppose, translated from the French, some peculiar idiomatic nuance has been lost--though its meaning is clear enough in modern, everyday English. But Cézanne learned all his life, and among others from Pissarro. He was entirely self-taught, except by studying the work of others. So the vehemence of the statement might be doubted. Still, a key critical point has been made.

All artists are largely self-taught. They pick up, or steal, what it is they need to know. And they do this in an amoral, ruthless fashion. Good for them. The statement (true or not) gives us a deep insight into Cézanne, and we are able to see him all the better for it. Whether he truly said it or not.

Schjedahl--a good critic--favors Cézanne over Pissarro, as does most of the world. And I. But painters don't exist in order to be compared to one another. They exist in order to paint. All his life Cézanne was learning and painting. Near the end of the century, when he was ageing and ailing, Cézanne was still innovating, more so than when he was younger. The above watercolor is a mature effort to understand some of the new ideas of Impressionism and to make them  his own. The visual reference to Seurat is evident.

An earlier still life by Cézanne

How well he succeeded is a matter of opinion. (See the above painting, a landscape.) But its the value exceeds the high price it would bring in today's fiercely competitive market.

Likewise Van Gogh, who along with Picasso brings top dollar today, but during his lifetime Van Gogh earned hardly a sou. Now, Picasso--that is a different story.

Thanks for the visit,
Robert C. Arnold, Editor