Adventure #3: Part 3 The Spirit on the Lake

Peering over the railing of the dock we concluded that these two frogs were indeed mating, and even though they floated completely motionlessly, were also not dead or dying.  But we also noted that there was a line or string of some sort that seemed to be tangled around the female’s leg and went long deep into the water.  From the distance we were at it appeared to be algae covered fish line.  And then suddenly the two of them plummeted to the bottom and we thought they were drowning from the snag.

Brianna was on it.

“Be the hero!” I encouraged.

She cast out her lure to try to snag the line and free the poor frogs from nature’s bane. 

Every time she thought she had it snagged it seemed to disappear.  “It’s like it’s disintegrating,” she kept saying, puzzled.  And then finally… she got it!  We were so excited to save the frogs from…

The so called line had broken and a piece of it was hanging from her lure.  I looked at it closely and in horrifying realization I cried, “Those are EGGS!”  She cried out too of course and immediately freed the string of eggs from the hook and threw them back into the water. 

We felt pretty damn stupid and horrible that in our effort to save nature, we just totally interfered with the life cycle of frogs and possibly killed about a hundred potential tadpoles.  There’s a reason they lay hundreds of eggs.  Many of those tadpoles will get eaten, and even in adult hood will be preyed upon by bass and birds and all of the other predators in a lake.  


Man, did we just kill those chances for the few survivors to make it into maturity and procreate like these two managed to do. 
For Pete's sake.... 

We laughed about this for quite a while, mocking everything we said up until the moment we realized it was a string of eggs.  “Be the hero!”  Bahaha!  “It’s like it’s disintegrating.”  Bahaha! 

OH. Brother....

But it was a wonderful moment in its own way.  The spirit of needing to help a life form that could very well be deemed insignificant to others was ever present.  And it gave us a story to tell that made us laugh together.  It was a memory made that I know her mother would appreciate. 

 As Brianna was sitting up on the dock railing, and after she re-freed the eggs back into the water, I took a picture of her. 

I don’t know if other people feel a strange haunting from certain photographs like I do, but this turned out to be one of those photographs.  When I got home that evening and uploaded the pictures of our day, I stopped short on this one.  I stared at it with an overwhelming emotion. 

It sometimes feels like I’m looking on a past that hasn’t become a past yet.  I imagined ten years from now, twenty even.  I thought of all the old photographs that Brianna went through after her mother died, pulling out pictures of her mom from when her mom was young, pictures of her mother fishing, and I thought: Brianna’s children are going to look back on this picture someday and see that their mother had joy in her life.  They’re going to see a mother who suffered tragedy and managed to keep breathing and living.  I can’t explain how some photographs haunt me, but they do, and this one did profoundly.  There was more than an image captured in this photograph.  It stopped time entirely and preserved an exact moment of goodness that will forever be. 

The sun rose higher as the hours crept on and the sky was jay blue.  We were successful catching quite a few decent sized sunnies, Brianna catching the largest, a nice seven inch. 

We probably pulled in over thirty sunfish. 

I have been fishing several times at this spot since this day, and have not caught nearly as many.  Even though I can see schools of them in the water, they have not been biting like they did that day.

Throughout the day people came and left.  We took funny videos of our sunfish.  We ate snacks and soaked in the hot, hot sun.  We watched the snapping turtle come and go as he hoped for worm treats, and saw eagles soar over the water.   

Before the city of Plymouth was settled by a Frenchman named Antoine LeCounte, the Dakota tribe inhabited this area.  Medicine Lake, the heart of Plymouth, is just around the bend from Parker’s.  Medicine Lake was named by the Dakotas, but in their language the name of the lake was Mdewakanton, which means “Lake of the Spirit”.  A warrior lost his life in a canoe on that lake, his body never recovered, and it is said that Mdewakanton was named after him. 

The Dakota believe that one must gain a spirit power, a force of nature that is mysterious unto itself, a force that will connect you with greater things.  They believe it is obtained through certain people, or even animals or certain places. 

I believe that there is a constant power governed by energy that can be obtained in the human spirit of good things, beauty, appreciation and a healthy environment.  There is always energy.  There are places on this grand planet that are more potent than others, true, and then there are places potent to only certain passersby.  I know Parker’s Lake doesn’t have the energy that the Grand Canyon does, for example.  But there is a force on this land that is familiar, comforting, awe-inspiring and mystical.  It is full of life. It is full of history and ghosts and wildness. 

I don’t know how to define spirit for you, Reader.  It might be an energy we generate from our own whimsical desires.  It might be energy left behind from beings that once lived.  It might be our own emotional reactions to beauty and the nature of good things.  However you define “spirit”, there was spirit on the lake that day.  I still feel it when I go there, especially in the early morning hours when it is just me and the wild life around it.  But that day that Brianna needed to mend from a hard week of grief, the spirit was strong.  There was an energy that was especially kind to us, whether it was from an otherworldly source or from the aura of love between two friends, it was ever present. 

I love my friend Brianna.  Her mother will forever be proud of her two daughters and the amazing women they have grown into, and the strength they have obtained on their own.  This blog post is dedicated to a phenomenal, devoted, strong mother who raised two amazing daughters who will go on and give that same energy and spirit back into the world. 

She, was the spirit on the lake that day.