Lakeside living offers plenty of perks. Views, swimming, dog fetch swim-a-thons, boating, spectacular sunrises, watersports, beach bonfires, the sounds of water lapping while hammocking,… Plenty of perks. More than I can list. Rarely does a day pass without a breeze freshening and restoring circulation. And so it seems that one of the greatest gifts we enjoy at Rosslyn is living with the flux and flow of nature’s watery metronome. Yet, from time to time, this dynamic discourse slows, then stills. These lulls, infrequent but occasionally stultifying, cause pause. Recalibration. Metamorphosis. And a gentle reminder that sometimes stagnant waters aren’t actually stagnant at all.
Sometimes stagnant waters are actually just one small sliver of a much larger oasis like Rock Pond that that I paddled with a painter friend earlier this autumn. A small pivot, a few paddle strokes in a canoe, will alter the perspective revealing a bigger picture and a broader context.
And yet, for one reason or another, sometimes stagnant waters are not an illusion. Not just a temporary pause in the ebb and flow of things. Sometimes rain falls into a rowboat sitting so close to the water’s edge but begrudging the fallen water a welcome reunion with its gently lapping neighbor. The dinghy, intended to keep the water out, keeps the water in instead. The swamped dinghy gathers leaves to keep company with the rain, and before long a tannic tea blooms. Maybe a frog finds her way to this tannic trough. Or nymphs.
Within these 60+ acres of lush landscape, waterfront, streams, and increasingly wild nooks and crannies, waterways — sometimes flowing, sometimes stagnant — offer regular reminders that nature nurtures not only when coursing but also when temporarily thwarted. Even this still life above, forgotten boat with bow line and oars abandoned haphazardly, teems with life and possibility. Imagine the tadpoles daydreaming about the soon-so-soon transformation that will allow them to leap on to a seat, then up and over the gunnels and onto the beach.
There’s a certain cinematographic serenity to the portrait of a neglected dinghy that reminds me of this rutted photograph below.
Glen remedied this muddy mess, yet another situation where sometimes stagnant waters collect in the tractor ruts between two of Rosslyn’s back meadows. In “Meadow Maintenance” I shared his practical transformation of these parallel ponds — likely breeding and feeding grounds for all manner of critters — and that offers yet another sort of reminder. When a perspective shift is insufficient, we need to act. Agency. Sometimes stagnant water is best addressed with a change.
And still other times the situation might shift without agency. Another recent nod to sometimes stagnant waters appeared in “Bridging a Braided Brook“. The image above captures a current-less moment in the stalled journey of a stream. Library Brook, during drier times like most of the last few months, shrinks until only the subtlest of trickles moves downstream. Sometimes stagnant pools form like the one above. A perfect spot for a raccoon to wash her hands of a whitetail deer to drink. These temporarily tranquil pools are ephemeral. Here today; gone tomorrow. The moisture we’ve received over the last couple of days will doubtless restore the stream’s current, flushing the floating fall foliage out to the lake.
In abbreviating this post, I offer you an admission, probably more apparent than initially intended. Sometimes I too feel stagnation setting in. I fret. I grow anxious. I play with perspective. I fuss with metaphorical dams and dikes. I reference previous maps and cairns.
Remembering words of a favorite teacher thirty five years ago. A chance encounter between classes. How are you doing? A greeting cloaked in a question. She smiles off the greeting and answers the question.
“Like sticks and leaves tangled in a stream,” she starts, laughing, gaze distant. “Stuck behind a rock, tugged by turbulence, but unable to untangle, to rejoin the flow…”
I’m paraphrasing. A third of a century later, the exact words are wanting, but the gist endures. It’s become a point of reference on my life map. (Source: Downriver Drifting)
I remind myself that sometimes stagnant circumstances are opportunities. For resting and recuperating. Revitalizing. Regrouping. Sometimes transformation is happening beneath the tranquil surface. Gestation. Sometimes a cloudburst will wash away impediments. Timely inundation. And sometimes we need to be the cloudburst. Agency!
What do you think?