Sanity

It rained all night and morning is heavy with clouds and humidity. The big lake is about as smooth as it ever gets, too large to have a mirror surface except on the rarest of days, it has taken on the appearance of old wavy window glass.
Now that October is here, it won't be long until the large long necked western grebes show up, but today all of the distant long necks silhouetted by the water belong to cormorants. They returned about 2 weeks ago.

In the marsh, the cattails have started to yellow and what has been a summer wall of green is now variegated in uneven vertical and swaying stripes. The big lodge shows signs of fall. The beaver have left deep bold trails running from the water to the top of the lodge. They have also left large peeled limbs, sometimes 3 or 5 inches thick. Fall is home repair and by winter, this already large house will be a few inches taller.

"So it goes" comes to mind, a phrase from one of Kurt Vonnegut's novels. Odd that something like that should pop into my mind while in the marsh, but people the world over are bickering about details without any grasp of the whole picture. Yet, the marsh retains its sanity.