I was born and raised in Michigan, so it’s not like I know the day-to-day details of weather anywhere else.  But to my taste, it doesn’t get any better than experiencing the changing of the seasons in my home state.  These sunset photos were taken on April 2, 2010, about 30 minutes apart, just a week and a half after ice out, on a day when the temperatures soared to 82 degrees.

A Pileated Woodpecker visited our suet feeder.  The loons are already back on the lake.  The Canada Geese are paired up and cranky.  The lake is alive with loon wails, geese honks, and Merganser quacks. The visiting Buffleheads are doing their goofy water skimming dances.  This weekend we saw a good sized pike, probably getting his appetite worked up for a gosling or two, swimming over the big weed pile at the west end of Ghost Bay.  Small mouth bass are moving through the shallows and circling Belly Button Island.  We sat in our kayaks, taking it all in.  Delicious!

Sealed-in-plastic puzzles never have pieces missing, do they?  Once, when I was a child, we got a thousand-piecer with one duplicate piece and one missing piece.  But that was 45 years ago.  There’s quality control now, right?  I looked everywhere.  The piece, it is missing.  Missing. As in not in the box.  How’s that for green apples?  Kim Norlien (“the painter of peace and tranquility” TM) probably cares.  Before he sold rights to his loon painting to the puzzle guys he must have made them promise that when they chopped it up into itsy bitsy pieces and packed it in a plastic bag before stuffing it in a a box and then wrapping the box with cellophane, that they’d not leave any peace out.

Hoover, the cat.  He is one, so it always seemed best to leave him home.  Around his stuff.  Where he knows where his everything is.  And isn’t.  For more than three years now, we’ve always left him home.  He likes, and we like, his reliable cat sitter.  But we decided Hoover might like the lake house.  We will be here for five or six days.  It’s winter and we wouldn’t need to leave him for hours while we do fun stuff on the lake.  We have bird feeders.  We have birds and squirrels at the feeders.  Birds and squirrels.  Birds, Hoover.  You will like the birds.  And squirrels.

Hoover only stayed under the bed in the back room for about half an hour.  He only stayed hiding under his blanket for another half an hour.  Then he got interested in the place.  Really interested.  In everything.  In everything several times in a row.  He paced the perimeters of the main rooms.  He looked at himself in the mirror.  Over and over.  When morning came, he watched birds and squirrels from various vantage points.  Three days and a few hours later, he seems to be  acclimated.  We think he likes the place.  We know he likes the birds and squirrels.  He’s already found favorite spots.  In his “Kitty Pod.”  Sitting on an end table that looks out onto the deck.  Sleeping on the flannel sheets with colorful fish on them.   His ears twitch while he sleeps and dreams.  Betcha he’s stalking birds and squirrels.

Long Lake is surrounded by a mix of pine, birch/aspen, cedar and assorted hard woods, including  maple and oak.  This means our fall is a combination of yellows, oranges, and reds, all anchored by the steady green of the pines.  The fall colors were spectacular this year.

Today, November 7th, the deciduous trees are mostly bare.  It was 62 degrees and sunny.  More like September than November.  It’s already snowed here, but today we paddled our kayaks over to Ghost Bay and checked out Belly Button Island.  The sea gulls were having a convention at a few spots on the lake.  We rousted some Bufflehead ducks.  The water was very cold.  The sun was very warm.  After a long paddle I curled up under a warm wool knitted blanket for a nap.  Decadent.  Wonderful.

Oh.  This guy is a male Bufflehead.  His name is a corrupted form of “buffalo” head, so named because these duck have shaggy dark brown thick fur, long beards and once roamed the prairies in large herds.  No, so named because the duck’s big white spot on his head resembles the big white spot on the head of a buffalo.   Let’s see, why are these guys named after a buffalo?  I suppose  because both creatures have rather large heads for their body size.  Maybe?  Or else the naming guys were just joking.

Steve took this photo as we entered Ghost Bay the last weekend in September, early, just after sunrise.  The mist had mostly cleared from the water. The sunshine was spilling through the trees, painting this splash of gold on the water. I didn’t want to disturb the scene by paddling through it. Can you imagine what it must be like to be a nice big bass sliding through the dark cold water and come upon this?  I wonder if they stop dead in their tracks (or whatever would be the fish equivalent of tracks).

I know.  We should probably stay off the water when the fog is thick.  But it was very early, on a cold September morning, and no one else was out on the water.  Our kayaks are neon orange and bright yellow.  Steve was wearing his blaze orange cap.  I was wearing my most amazed expressions and muttering inanities like “it’s so beautiful, I can’t believe it’s so beautiful.”  I think we were safe.  Safe enough.  If you constantly fret about safe you’re going to miss a lot of incredible.