Postcards from the Lake: The Nightly Show

Summer evenings in Northern Michigan are long ones. It can be as late as 10:30 at night and there is still a bit -- just a bit -- of light remaining. The clouds, if there are any, and much of the sky is close to inky black but there's just a hint of light remaining.

Shortly before that -- sometimes as early as eight when the sun is still hot, more often as dusk moves in -- a stately sight occurs. I'm not even sure the correct word to use -- parade sounds too jolly. Flotilla, too naval. But one begins to see, far out on the water, the vague shapes of seven or eight Canada Geese, bobbing gently on the water.  They are majestic.

Seven or eight? Not by half. Within minutes, and from different directions, they are joined by dozens more of their elegant friends, forming a line so long, my camera lens can't capture it.

"Surely, you jest," you might say. "Dozens? Really?"

Really.

This occurrence has happened nightly since we have been here. One night I counted seventy-six; the next, eighty-eight. And to be honest, I probably missed more than a few as they blocked each other as they floated along.

 

Most of them end up on our neighbor's beach and lawn with its rich grass. Some find something worth eating on ours. Others just lay still or float in the shallows. And then, after quite a long awhile ashore, as if some unheard but powerful command was issued, they set out again.

Where they go, I don't know.

I just know that I've come to look so forward to it, that on one of those nights when it got to be late and there was no sign of them, I was worried. Then, in the dark, I heard a bit of honking. They were there.

And all was well.