Marshland retreat

The day.

Kayak on the lake with Sharon. Marsh plants. Red winged black birds in the cattails. Milk vetch, ferns, and marsh milkweed. Slow paddle through the lilly pads all in bloom. Whitetail deer at the marsh edge look up from munching on lily pads. The groans of bullfrogs break the silences. Late afternoon sun streaks, lotus like blooms just open, and everything framed in driftwood. A mating pair of loons, the owners of the lake watch us go by. Dragon flies dart amongst the shallows, freshwater mussels open their bivalves below the water, and small minnows swim by.

Meditating on the dock in the quiet hours after the afternoon and before twilight there were squeeks and grunts, barely audible behind me. I broke my concentration to turn my head around. There from the catacombs of gnarled roots along the shore line a bewhiskered face pokes out. It is a mink foraging dexterously along the lake shore. She smells me, hesitant and undecided....and disappears. I go back to trying to meditate.

But I am distracted. There are more sounds from the bank and this time not one but two, three heads poke out of the roots. It is a whole family of minks. Trailing mom under the dock behind me two babies follow clumsily. I watched them chirp and ramble off hugging the shoreline amongst the cedar trees and sandy banks until they disappeared. Here along the marshland the neighbors are all wild. Deer graze among the cattails, wild turkey and sand hill cranes forage along the edges of the fields, bull frogs hum, loons wail, and the minks scurry and chirp over the boulders.

Here at Sharon's family cabin amongst the wooded lakeshore not far from the town of Charlevoix we are holing ourselves away this next week, "Brainsmash 2010(!)" we are jokingly calling it. We are here partly to come up with the masterminding behind a new film we want to make on science and myth and partly to retreat away from the outside world, goof off and relax. This is our own marshland retreat.

Now my friend Becca and I are road tripping from the Great Lakes North East through Quebec and onward to the coast of Nova Scotia on my way back home. Stay tuned for adventures in Canadia :)