Legal With Eagles

Last night the sky felt like the inside of a shell.... opalescent quiet pink, bright silver, distant blue, striped with wings of muted gold. I dreamed of the lake, washed with the scent of fish and water and the dusty sweetness of the balsam firs in the sun.

I always smell it miles before we get there and it makes my heart jump up in my chest....every single year.

I dreamed of mergansers slipping by all silent and secret, babies in tow, like beads on a nursery string. Of the resounding crash of a beaver's tail, the exact sound you would expect if someone in a really, really bad mood threw a bowling ball in the lake. It will wake you up at night when it interrupts the gentle susurrus of the wavelets against the dock, I can promise you that.

I dreamed of the Skin-so-Soft, bug dope, and dried plastic pseudo-worm, with just an understated hint of dead bait, smell of my long-closeted tackle box and the sharp bite of the line through my fingers on the rare occasions when I actually hook something.

Of eagles, loons and puddle ducks that babble around the porch, rudely demanding bread and cereal, and sooner rather than late.

I dreamed of the rocking cradle of the dock, a place to be of the water but not in it, gently shifting with the rhythm of the waves, one with ducks and dragonflies....the sun like a friendly hand on your shoulder or the caress of a loved one on your face.

I dreamed of all I love about our week at Peck's Lake each year, all the bright and shining joys it brings.....

And it came to me. I had better get down to the Town Clerk's office and pretty darned sudden too. I don't have a fishing license.