Sitting By A Pond

Continuing to travel, see the sights, get together with friends and family. It doesn’t leave a lot of time for writing, but (big surprise!) I’m taking LOTS of pictures.

This afternoon I spent an hour sitting by a small pond that’s near our hotel in Saranac Lake. Yesterday, when we got here, there was a large flock of Canada geese on our side of the pond. At least six or seven adults plus nine or ten goslings, at one point all blocking the hotel driveway as they strolled across.

We’re in the Adirondacks, which (obviously, or not) is the birthplace of the Adirondack chair. They’re very comfortable, with a handful of them set beside the pond to enjoy the view and the calm.

Many of the lakes and ponds seen yesterday are “well groomed,” for lack of a better term. They are in the middle of town and the shorelines are to a great extent mowed grass, brick or stone walls, or swimming beaches. Even the parts of the shoreline that are “wild” are still only feet from the sidewalks, running trails, and streets, making them more like “mild lite.”

While this pond is also in town, it has no improvements or “cleaning up” of the banks. It’s marshy, muddy, wild, and weedy. And there are wildflowers everywhere along the banks.

The irises here survived the rains of the last week. The ones in my mother’s garden in northern Vermont did not.

Across the pond you can see all kinds of debris and what might be a beaver lodge or some other sort of critter lair. There are also quite a few large trees that got knocked over when Hurricane Irene came through here last year and caused a tremendous amount of damage and flooding.

Across the pond, maybe 400 yards away, is the flock of Canada geese that I was looking for. It seems that there’s always one adult on watch, while the others eat and protect the goslings that are feeding.

I’ve always been interested in patterns and textures in our surroundings, things that might be taken for granted in the everyday world but which stand out and can be interesting when isolated. For example, the tiny waves pushed by the wind as the sunlight glints off of them.

Or the way the waves ripple on the open waters, but the sections of the pond filled with water lilies and grass stay calm and dark.

Or a close-up of the grasses and “weeds” in the mud along the bank. Of course, here they’re not “weeds” at all, but a source of food, cover, and building materials.

Or the ferns and cattails growing in the shallow waters just off of the banks.

LATE UPDATE & BONUS PICTURES:

After dinner, when it was almost dark, I spotted the flock of Canada geese feeding on our side of the pond.

They apparently have no fear of people, since there were many hotel guests standing out there watching them.

If any of us tried to move and get too close, one of the adults would go on alert. This was a good time to stop and take a step back, since geese can be vicious and aggressive. But as long as we stayed eight to ten feet back, and then didn’t move forward or startle them when they had moved to within three or four feet of us, they were just fine ignoring us.

I was surprised that even the flash from the camera meant nothing to them. Keep your distance, don’t make any sudden moves, leave them alone and let them eat, and they were just fine with you being there watching them.

One of the couples standing there watching them asked if I knew if there were any beaver or otters in the area. (I don’t know for sure, but I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if both species lived around here.) They had witnessed something like that swimming across the pond, trying to come ashore near where the geese were feeding, and being driven off by most of the angry, defensive, adult geese.

All of that to see, just sitting by a pond.