Image: Barbara Kautz
On Lake Huron
I sit on the deck, basking in the late afternoon sun of a late August day, content to sit and watch the sun’s rays bounce off the lake brilliantly, as if the lake itself were the finest of cut diamonds.
My nearest neighbor is a single cormorant. A big one. Floating low in the water, so low I wonder if he might sink. Most years the cormorants, mallards, and geese on this little finger of Lake Huron are plentiful: A mother mallard with 12 ducklings trying to keep up behind her, and a mother goose with an equally large gaggle of babies. But I’ve never seen a family of baby cormorants, and this year there is only the one.
I wonder why he is alone. Is it because the other bird has wisely begun to make their way to warmer climes? It is late August, after all. Or is this his fishing spot, a secret place, known only to him? If cormorants can be regal, then he is regal, with a long neck and a bright orange beak.
I watch him dive again and again, then notice there are three other cormorants, much smaller than he, swimming in circles 30 feet to the east. He joins them, and they circle around each other, almost as if they are dancing a square dance. They take turns diving for fish. Then he returns to his spot in front of the cabin. And it dawns on me. Maybe he is a she, a mother learning to let go, allowing her babies to swim on their own.
Barbara Kautz