By Rod DesJardins
Beacon Columnist
The loons woke me up this morning. I hadn’t heard that sound since last September when we packed up the campers and moved back to town. Their song had me up before the sun, and it called me to the lake. I put the coffee on and got dressed while impatiently waiting for it to perk.
With my mug in hand, I walked across the field, past the fire pit and down the hill to the dock. The pair of loons were off to the east circling and diving under each other in their mating dance. They ignored my intrusion and serenaded me with their wonderful trills.
Mornings at Powell’s Point are for the birds. Not just the loons and the ducks, but gulls and crows and wandering flocks of songbirds flitting from tree to tree. And an eagle or two every day. Somehow my hearing improves when I am here. I hear them all. It could be just the absence of the people noise that keeps me from hearing the things that really matter, the sounds that I enjoy. Like loons.
We’re close enough to the highway that I can still hear semi-trucks pulling the grade up the Forest Inn hill from Browns Addition, but the faraway sound of a truck on the highway is comforting to me. It reminds me that the world is marching on just over the hill and the cogs and wheels of civilization have not stopped spinning. I just got off for a while.
I sat on the dock and watched the sun rise over the East Channel Lighthouse and light up the clear blue waters of the bay. It was a cool morning, and I had my “old man fleece” on as I sat and took in the morning sky. Murphy found a spot on the dock next to my chair.
I heard the steady drum of a boat motor and saw her as she rounded the point headed for the west channel. I didn’t recognize the boat, but I waved at the two men onboard as they went by and they waved back. Two more boats were already trolling for salmon between me and Muskrat Point. It takes a dedicated fisherman to be on the lake before sunrise. I wished them luck and knew that if they didn’t catch any fish, they’d at least get to watch the sunrise from out on the lake. That alone was worth the price of admission.
Before long the Max B rounded the point, the deep throb of her diesel engine announcing her arrival long before I saw her. She headed for the west channel, too, and the newest generation of VanLandschoots onboard got a wave as they went by.
I sipped my coffee and planned my day. We are still setting up camp for the summer and will spend the next hundred days here. During that time, I will watch the sunrise move from over the East Channel Light slowly southward each morning until September when it rises over the hill behind the hospital.
And each morning the loons will call me to the lake.