Lake Life and Savoring Books

I find lately that I am cheered by the combination of water and light. When you live in older suburbs, unless you own waterfront property, lakes and rivers are hidden away as parts of infrastructure or surrounded by expensive homes without any public access. There are entirely private lakes, such as the one near my mother-in-law’s house. It used to be public, but was bought by a development and gated some time ago.

People who have been fishing or walking around that lake for years complained, and eventually wore a path around the gate where it abuts a drainage ditch, which is how I got in.

This Eastern Kingbird is on the gate keeping people out. Occasionally baby alligators make their way into the lake. When the Muscovy Ducks start disappearing, they call someone to move the gator to the swamp. Or they turn it into gator bites, which are quite tasty. I’m not sure. (Gator leg meat is like chicken thighs, the cheaper, tastier cut.)

I counted about nine of them. They need to be wary, as a large hawk circles the lake as well. I couldn’t get a good picture, but it was fully white on the underside and might have been a female Cooper’s or a Broad-tailed Hawk, as I noticed a white stripe across the tail feathers, and none of the Red-tailed’s tell-tale bands.

The lake also had lots of shy turtles, including this softshell. I couldn’t identify the other turtles, they jumped off the logs as soon as I was in sight. We mostly get musk turtles at Timber Creek, so these were a nice change. I’ve heard a Kingfisher at this lake before, but not this time.

On the plane, I read Doomsday Book by Connie Willis. I’ve wanted to read this one for years; it is not daunting, as Willis excels at the breezy type of story driven by arguments and misunderstandings that Hollywood loves. This story, however, is daunting in its emotional punch. It’s about a time-traveling historian in the time of the Black Death, one of the most harrowing times in human history. Willis also excels at character, and she writes believable people in the 1300s very well. This was a good follow-up to The Bright Ages. She humanizes the past very well, but I can’t say I am a fan of her wordy and repetitive style. Much like Joe Abercrombie, she has a lot of fans, but I am not one. Don’t let me dissuade you from the book, as it is quite good and I finished its 577 pages in a few days.

I wouldn’t call it a “potato chip” book, but a lot of books are meant to be consumed the same way. I’m not usually fond of them. I want to remember them. I will remember Doomsday Book.

If you also are tired of books and stories that are like potato chips, I recommend A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers. A short novel about a human on a planet like ours, who becomes a tea monk, someone who helps other people with their problems by supplying succor and a nice cup of tea. Dex has their own problems, a yearning they cannot seem to satisfy; they want to hear crickets, but most of them are extinct.

Panga is a world like Earth in that the humans had a Factory Era that nearly doomed it, but the people changed their path in time to avoid it. The robots who worked in the factories became self-aware, and humans acknowledged their personhood and did not interfere with their autonomy. Humans also set aside half the world to be untouched by humans, wild and unmanaged, without human stewards. This is not a perfect world, but people seem happy; except Dex, who goes seeking crickets, in the wild whence humans often do not return. It’s a great read, and I look forward to the second book, A Prayer for the Crown-Shy. They are both collected in Monk and Robot.

I could have breezed through this book as well, but I savored it. In between chapters, I read stories by Peter S. Beagle, collected in The Overneath. He’s a favorite writer of mine thanks to The Last Unicorn, but his fantasy stories are resonant and fairy-tale-like, calling on archetypes and myth, so they feel like forgotten history. I have his first novel, A Fine and Private Place, so I may read that next… but I really enjoyed the dark magic of “Great-Grandmother in the Cellar,” which is set in the world of The Innkeeper’s Song. The story is inspired by Robert Frost’s poem, “The Witch of Coos,” which I read shortly after, and wish I’d read earlier!

My friend Antonia wrote another great piece on the concept of trespass.

Trespass against

Next week, I’ll write about my visit to the Penn Museum, and its Mesopotamian collection. And maybe about seeing Bald Eagles at Conowingo Dam… if I see any.