Laura Lake

Only ten minutes out of Seymour heading “Up North” and tension I didn't even know I had is slipping away, as if I were shedding a skin. Fifteen minutes from Laura Lake and I am mellow and happy. Driving into the campsite, I become euphoric. I am home.

Gary, who arrived yesterday morning, has the camper set up save for sheets on the bed. We make the bed together, me inside and him on the outside working through the bottom of the pop out extension. It is the easiest way to do this.

It has been overcast and cold all morning, and I am tired so I take a nap, a deep two hour sleep, and wake up to sunshine and a warming day. Gary has been busy improving things, putting up the cook tent, and setting up folding chairs next to the fire pit. He has been trying to make a fire but after days of rain the wood is far too wet.

He has the sage I gave him a while back and he sets about smudging the area, not so much to rid it of mosquitoes, since there aren't any but to rid us of evil spirits. We've never had any at Laura Lake so it must work. He has sweet grass, too, and later will burn some of that.

The deciduous trees are just beginning to leaf out this far north. The forest floor is still covered with last years leaves. In perhaps two weeks they  will disintegrate and the world will be fully green once again.

Kevin, the Ranger, stops by. His cancer, discovered two years ago, is in remission, he tells us. Two years ago, he had to have a kidney removed. We know all the rangers and keep track of them so are glad to hear he is doing fine. He tells us that there has been no bear activity here lately, good news, I suppose, though we like the bruins when they wander through. Not so good are humans. He tells us somebody for some unknown reason stole a pump handle from the Bear Lake campground. Worse, on the far end of this campground, someone put a deer carcass in a dumpster. It probably stayed nicely frozen for the winter, but now with warm weather is smelly. Not a nice job for the National Forest Service.

A chipmunk who may remember us from last year pays us a visit but we have no peanuts. Instead, Gary puts a dollop of peanut butter on a rock. Chippy likes it but has to keep coming back to lick it. There is no way he can store it.

We go to the Corner Store in Armstrong Creek to get some dry firewood and get information. We want to go out to eat tomorrow and found out there is a Taco Tuesday special at a local pub and grill.

We come home to have stew for supper, then I take my walking stick and go down the trail to the bog. This is a real trail, with many roots, leaves and deer tracks. It curves and twists so there is always the possibility of meeting up with something big, scary and interesting. Not today though.

The belted kingfisher screams at me as if to say, “How dare you set foot in my territory.” I tell him the house wrens in my back yard feel the same way when I am there. “What's your point?” he screams back. “I've been coming here for almost thirty years. I have some a right,” I say.

He screams again, and I get the message. What is a paltry thirty years compared to the millennia he and his ancestors have been hanging around these parts? I move on.

The trillium are in bloom as well as a yellow lily Gary must identify for me.

The blueberry bushes are loaded with blossoms so there should be good picking by June. The bog is calm and still.

I would like to sit there for a while and take it in, but the sun is going down. I don't want to walk over those roots in the dark.

The hermit thrust is singing in bell like tones. Gary is about to light the fire. Tonight, we'll look at the stars and perhaps see the moon, so close to earth.

All is right with the world.