Tuesday, April 23

Lakeside Living - Art in Nature

"Nature will bear the closest inspection. She invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain."

~ Henry David Thoreau


The waves battered the shoreline Saturday as the day spun through patterns of snow and rain and everything in between.  When the sunshine arrived early Sunday morning, I walked along the shore in search of the usual offerings of litter and found objects that arrive after a day of whitecaps. 

Along with bait containers, bobbins, tennis balls, soda cans and beer bottles, I found the shoreline shrubs in a sheath of ice.  The only evidence on this peaceful morning, of the battering they endured the day before.



 

Monday, April 22

Lakeside Living - A Storm Rolls In

"I was a complete tomboy. I loved wandering out in storms or walking on the beaches in the dark. It was a very free upbringing, and I'm grateful to my parents for that."
~ Amanda Burton


I was summoned from sleep Saturday morning by the sound of ice pellets tapping against my window.  I cracked an eye to the grey dawn and burrowed further beneath the blankets.  Some time later, the sound of the rising wind drew me from my bed.  I stood by the window and watched a squall work its way up the lake.

Our lakefront cottage provides front row seats for every system that settles in from the northwest -- and most of them do.  We watch fog creep up the lake or burn away under the heat of the morning sun.  We watch storm clouds roll and churn and tumble up the lake.  And sometimes, as it happened on Saturday, a squall arrives like a curtain drawing its way across the lake.


I am captivated by the way that nature can breathe life into a day with a breeze, that rises to a wind, that manifests into a storm and then dissolves back into a clear day.  A photograph may capture the mood, but never the energy..

I wish that I could find words to describe the miracle of nature.  Instead, I can explain only by saying that I feel closest to God when I am in the temple He created...rather than rejoicing in one we created for Him.