Sunday, September 22, 2024

With the change to my normal meal schedule and the earlier bedtime, I found myself awake at 3 in the morning needing to make the long trek to the latrine. The sky was so clear and the stars so bright that I didn’t need a headlamp. I stayed up gazing at them for awhile and tried to take some pictures with a long exposure.

Took some time to get back to sleep but when I did, I slept in to make up for it. It had cooled off a bit, and the wind had picked up again after a quiet night so I relaxed and organized the campsite after breakfast. Took some time to read and play chess, and got some exercise by attempting to cut through a large tree someone had cut down halfway to the latrine. It was a big job with my little hand saw, and I gave up on it after about 30 minutes. There was plenty of firewood left behind by the last campers, which was nice because the obvious heavy usage of the site would have made foraging time consuming. By early afternoon the wind died down enough to take out the canoe, so I tried some fishing near the campsite, covering the inlet to the East and the open water to the Northwest. Had a solid bite on the second cast, but then nothing the rest of the afternoon. The wind picked up again, so I stopped for dinner, and within an hour the lake was completely calm. I decided to try again, but still had no luck until catching one 32” pike as I was about to quit for the night. One group of 5 campers in 2 canoes were the only people I saw all day, but they must have stopped at a site nearby, because I could hear them talking and occasionally laughing loudly as it got dark. I saw very little wildlife during the day as well, only some birds and a flock of geese that were heading south. Saw what seemed like a Pileated woodpecker, but it had an unusually shaped head, so I wasn’t sure if it might be something else, and it took off before I could get out my phone for a picture. Four loons settled down to rest on a flat rock that jutted just above the water out beyond the center of the lake, but they kept to themselves and were able to ignore the laughter from the nearby campsite. I hung out in front of the fire playing chess for an hour, enjoying the complete absence of mosquitoes and flies despite the calm. The forecast no longer anticipated rain either, so I kind of regretted bringing my rain/bug tent, which I never did set up, but knew I would never have taken the risk of leaving it behind. The forecast did call for a drop to freezing overnight, so I made some extra preparations for that and once again turned in early with my book.

~Gaskin Lake