July 31: Loon Call
Kristen Lindquist
Most mornings I hear a loon calling as it flies north over the house. The river out back is much too shallow and rocky here to accommodate a loon--they need a certain amount of open water to get up enough speed to take flight--so these early calls are from a loon in transit. Does the bird have a dawn fishing ritual in Camden Harbor? Wherever it goes each day, we're lucky enough to live in its flight path as it presumably returns to the lake.
It always gives me a little thrill to hear that tremolo as I go through my morning ablutions. Although we live in a dense neighborhood just a mile from downtown Camden, this flight song of the loon is our own call of the wild, hinting of remoter places. For just a few moments I look out at the craggy face of Mount Battie and imagine that I'm spending this golden summer at an old sporting camp in the North Woods wilderness, with a sunny deck overlooking a lake full of trout and loons that know how to properly greet the day.
Loon's dawn reveille.
Clean morning air promises
perfect summer day.
It always gives me a little thrill to hear that tremolo as I go through my morning ablutions. Although we live in a dense neighborhood just a mile from downtown Camden, this flight song of the loon is our own call of the wild, hinting of remoter places. For just a few moments I look out at the craggy face of Mount Battie and imagine that I'm spending this golden summer at an old sporting camp in the North Woods wilderness, with a sunny deck overlooking a lake full of trout and loons that know how to properly greet the day.
Loon's dawn reveille.
Clean morning air promises
perfect summer day.