Lake Leon, the Emerald Lake

Reading and writing, looking out on a Sunday afternoon at Lake Leon, emerald lake, the dammed up waters above the Leon River, the raging rapids or dusty dry bipolar ghost river that crosses the footprints of Peneteka, Spaniards and oil rush character actors.

A cacophony reaches my ear – birds, hundreds, gulls white and gray screaming calling diving toward fish brought to the surface by this first sunny February day in awhile. Majestic loons, stark, move in a row across the rippling surface water like a fleet of battleships, their pointed beaks and erect vertical necks like the bridge masts of Trafalgar frigates gone to war.

Lake Leon’s blue green surface sparkles boils from below with small silver light fishlings chased to the surface by mean menacing streaks below.

The loons dive, disappear, all in a line, nabbing tiny fins inside their sharp chiseled beaks. The white gray gulls dive bomb, The Battle of Britain, joining the feast, their calls beckoning the country around the cove to come observe the slaughter, the springlike feast after so many days of ice blue gloom.

Plenty for all.

Pull up a chair.

It lasts ten minutes. The loon posse moves left, then back right, like a prairie wildfire driving rabbits with clubs, like lemmings toward their fateful date with Dover White Cliff zero gravity greatness.

Lake Leon presents a curtains-up ecodrama as compelling as anything found in more famous deep adventure Klondike venues, projected on dark walls, by cable TV, late at night.

There’s no one here to see it, no bass boat. Neighbors aren’t home. Everybody’s in church, but are they really? I can’t imagine a benediction more graphically I AM than the symphony swirling thirty yards from the sanctuary of this veranda porch.

Clock ticks later, it’s over. Father, Son, Holy Ghost – the gulls fly off. The loons dive, disappear. I’m not sure how they left the stage.

Or why.

But they’re damn sure gone now.

We know this.

Lake Leon’s waves are quiet again, expectant – waiting to see What’s Next.

The wind turns chill.

The pen ceases to move.