Be Brave Not Safe

It has now been 50 days since we moved into our lake home. And, we couldn’t be happier.

Yes, there was PAIN in the transition. But, we won’t focus on that 🙂

We have been blessed by many family member visits (the 4 boys, my parents, our nephew and his family, my brother and his family) including their help unloading the U-Haul, unpacking, “beginning” to get ourselves organized and tidying up the place.

All we can say, as stated on the set of coasters my brother Roger gave us, is:

I’m reminded daily of what a very good church friend of ours (who owns a home on the water) frequently says: There is ALWAYS something happening at the lake.

To be clear, he isn’t referring to ANY hustle and bustle that can be found in a town or city…

When Cindy and I were on the hunt for our new home we scoped out over 30 lakefront properties inside of 30 days. We had the opportunity to view some beautiful houses with terrible waterfront, some awful cottages with breathtaking waterfront and many properties in between. To be honest, I was prepared to jump on any number of these (projects). Fortunately, Cindy would have none of it 🙂

Finally, we visited what could truly be considered a home. How did we know? Well, after thoroughly viewing the property and being fairly impressed we were struck by what we considered our sign. That is, as we were exiting the basement to the yard, facing the lake, Cindy called our attention to a fox trotting across the property. The way her story goes is that the fox stopped for a moment, looked at her and said, with attitude: “Uh-huh, I’m a fox.” and then continued on its way.

We were sold.

Since moving in we have experienced an abundance of wildlife and natural phenomenon.

During our first night’s stay, Cindy said she spotted a deer drinking from the lake. Unfortunately, she didn’t wake me for this so I had to (jealously) believe her. The next day I was able to confirm her sighting after finding MANY deer tracks clearly planted in the ground along the shore. Since then fresh deer tracks have continued to appear but we’ve yet to experience another sighting.

Until about 2 weeks ago our little cove had been frequented daily by ducks, loons and mergansers.

The ducks show-up quietly by swimming into the cove or by a more pronounced arrival as they come in for a landing, skimming gracefully across the surface of the water. In watching the ducks feed Cindy would comment: Look, a duck. Then, as it plunged its head underwater to feed she would say: Oh no, its a penguin. If you’ve ever seen a duck feeding you might make the same duck/penguin observation 🙂

Our ducks have since flown south.

Surprisingly, even yesterday I heard loons calling in the distance.

And, we are still viewing mergansers, although not up close, as our cove has begun to freeze over.

To be honest, until we were on the hunt for our lake home, I didn’t know what a merganser was. We had seen them before (at Mooselookmeguntic Lake) but never did the research to confirm the name.

During the viewing of one of the homes we saw a group of them swimming across the surface of the lake and then diving (like loons) for fish. But, unlike loons, they seem to fish in, well, a pack. That is, they dip their heads below the surface in their search of fish. Once spotted the group skims furiously across the water to round up their prey and then they dive to feast. The fish don’t stand a chance 🙂

I asked our realtor if he knew what these birds were called, observing that they were NOT loons. He said: Meganzas in his distinct New England accent. You’ll notice there are no “R’s” in the name…Thinking nothing of this, I later shared the name of these birds with my dad who had (surprisingly) never heard of these (meganzas). However, after he did some research online he was able to make the connection and update my understanding. Mergansers Craig, mergansers 🙂

One of the most beautiful sightings, which we’ve experienced a few times now, is a large bald eagle soaring majestically across our cove. There is nothing like clearly seeing the white head, dark brown body and white tail of our national bird. I would love to get a picture but I dare not take my eyes off of it during its flight for fear I might miss a second of its journey. Our latest sighting was on Christmas day.

Speaking of Christmas…We decided to change things up. You see, our nephew works for a lobster packing company, enabling him to get fresh lobster at “boat price.” So, our Christmas meal was a lobster feast, enjoyed by almost everyone (Cindy, my parents, our nephew and his family and myself). The 4 boys (again) gave this delicacy a try and unanimously decided that they really, really, really don’t like it. No problem! All the more for the rest of us 🙂

After the lobster feast many of us took up the dare of going for a swim. Actually, it really couldn’t be considered swimming. It was more of a leap into the frigid water, feeling the resulting pain and getting out as quickly as possible. Prior to doing so, Ethan was challenging us to swim with him to a rock in the middle of the cove. But, after experiencing the quick plunge he agreed that a longer duration in the water would most certainly result in hypothermia.

Here is a picture of the boys viewing the lake, on Christmas afternoon.

Now that I’ve shared some of our experiences with the wildlife, I thought I’d share a natural phenomenon that occurred during our first snowstorm since being here.

A few days ago, while the snow was falling, I decided to walk out on the little peninsula jutting out into the lake, from our land. While the lake had not yet begun to freeze over, the heavy snow was creating a layer of slush and ice in the cove. As I looked closer I observed what could only be described as flowers in the ice.

God’s creation is simply amazing.

Life is good!

Well, it’s time to get started for the day. You see, with ANY home comes maintenance projects to keep one busy. The current one we are undertaking is some minor patching and painting of the interior.

So, gotta go for now.

Happy New Year!