Gibban

The big lake is calm, calm as a small forest pond surrounded by tall trees and hidden from the slightest wind. It rains and a small grebe floats a 100 yards off, as alone right now as I am. Cars are jammed up on the big bridge a mile north. It doesn't have to be that way, but people, when pushed, often close themselves in and see no other way. That is part of the draw of the big lake for me. Is is so wide with the trees so distant and the sky so huge that I can only expand when I am there - not trying but just naturally flowing to fill the space. The far shore is distant enough that one can imagine that they are far in the wilderness. There is just so much to this world. Now, I count 10 of the medium sized grebes and a flock of buffleheads takes off across my bow. They make a whirring sound when they do that and it is their own signature. As I paddle up the east side of Union Bay, I find the eagle pair on the peak of the same boathouse where I saw them a few days earlier when they ...

It is calm, although not so calm as it appears. Thick gray overcast makes the water appear like spring ice, the last vestiges of a frozen lake when the surface is more slush than solid. But this is not ice. It rains the whole day without let up and I head south along the shore of the big lake, just to do something different. I take few photos because it seems to be a trip to be inside my head and in this direction, the big lake is not so much for the eye. I pass flocks of buffleheads every so often and also some common megansers, cormorants and farther out in the lake, small grebes. After a few miles, I return and pass my starting point to head north to the east marsh to see something natural and beautiful. The wind picks up when I am just short of the east channel of the burial island. Ducks are beginning to find protected places to sit out the evening.