What the Water Taught Me

It finally feels as though summer is here.  On the Friday of the first summer long weekend, we woke up to cloudy skies, warm air and no wind.  After checking the weather forecast which predicted rain in the afternoon, we headed down to our dock to take the canoe out.  No wind makes it possible for us to venture out further into Severn Sound which is part of the eastern most section of Georgian Bay.

Happily aboard our 18 foot freighter canoe, we made our way with the help of our 2.5 hp motor into the bigger water until we reached Canary Island.  We said hello to the nesting Ospreys on the marine beacon tower and cut the motor.  Then we paddled through the channel in Canary Island.  The first thing I noticed was that I couldn’t see into the water.  The sun was at the exact height that caused the sky to be reflected in the water’s glassy surface.  When I looked down at the water, I saw sky, because of the angle of the light.  I knew that later in the day when the sun is lower, the angle makes it possible to see down into the water where there are rocks, plants, fish and a sandy bottom.  But those were now invisible to me. 

This made me think about how our point of view, or the angle we take when viewing something affects what we can see.  I thought about people who are busy creating an identity for themselves  who keep you looking at the bright shiny bits.  These identities feel like shields to me and I wonder what is beneath or behind the carefully constructed and energized images on the surface.  I know that there could come a time when they feel safer and the shields go down so that what lies below may become visible.  In this world of images, it takes some wisdom to realize that what is shown on the surface, may have nothing to do with what lies below.  It made me think of politics and how politicians want you to see the constructed image instead of what is really there.  The water and sky were teaching me.

A little further on, we came across the exoskeletons of dragonfly nymphs still clinging to bulrushes.  The nymphs crawl up the bulrushes and clamp on somehow and then the adult dragonfly emerges, dries its wings and flies away.  I pondered my own transition from mother and caregiver to older woman.  It seems that the old casing or trappings must be left behind in order to fly free.  That is just the way things work.

Looking down at the surface of the water again to see if the angle of light had changed, I noticed hundreds and hundreds of shadfly larvae casings floating in the water.   The shadfly or mayfly is also a metamorphic insect.  The adult females deposit from four hundred to three thousand eggs into the water.  The eggs sink and may not hatch for up to a year.  The nymphs that hatch go through a series of molts as they grow.  They may take up to several years before emerging from the water, leaving their exoskeletons behind and flying as immature adults who molt once more after a day or so into full adults.  The adult phase is purely about procreation and they live for a few short days, mating, laying eggs, never eating and then dying.  We noticed that there were many dead adult mayflies floating alongside the exoskeletons of the nymphs.  I thought about the millions of shadfly eggs lying on the lake bottom waiting for the conditions to be right so that the nymphs could hatch.  I thought about all the seeds we plant on a daily basis with our words and actions.  Who knows what grows from them?

Shadflies belong to the Order Ephemeroptera, clearly linked to the word ephemeral which was a medical term meaning to last only one day. Once again, I thought about perceptions.  We call these insects flies because that is the stage that we see.  In reality, they spend most of their lives as nymphs which are nearly impossible for us to see.  But there were the floating adults corpses and nymph casings on the surface of the water that looked like sky.  While down below, is where their lives are really lived.

A little farther on, we stopped to pick up some boards that had washed up on the rocks.  Lost from some human construction elsewhere on the lake, they had beached here.  We will use them to add to our dock.  I was holding the canoe steady as my partner loaded the wood and had time to look under the water.  Yes, the angle of light and the shadow of the canoe made this possible!  Lying on the lake bottom, I spied a bright white egg.  Fishing it up, we discovered that it was a map turtle egg that must have been washed out of a nest.  The turtles are up laying eggs on the shores these days.  We brought it home and will attempt to hatch it.  It is probably too late, but we will give it a chance.  Here was the beginning of the life cycle, visible to me because of its size and the angle of light. 

I spent last Sunday playing with my partner’s four-year-old grandson.  I spend hours sitting with my 92 year old father and less time talking on the phone to my adult children.  My friends are around retirement age.  Each stage of life requires special vision if the person is to be seen.  You can’t just look at the surface to know what is beneath.  Beneath the outside casing of all of them can be found wise, sensitive, creative souls.  The water is teaching me how to see, how to wait until the depths are visible, how to look beneath the surface.  Only then can the whole story be revealed.