perspective from the lake

Doh no pictures but I had a wonderful late paddle in the kayak on the lake just below our house, there it is in our view every day and we rarely go down, we hear the frogs doing frog things int he distance every night and always say we should go listen to them down nearer the lake and I think of Lee Mellon and big sur and littlte crocodiles but we never do anyway I did tonight and it was well worth it. I got in the water just as the last light was fading into black and the stars were starting to show. Every time I get to the water I forget how it is, the kayak is big and heavy its an old Huntsman built by Captain McNulty in South Shields in the 70s out of bulletproof 70s glass fibre - orange and white, long with a turned up front, based on a baidarka ( inuit) design and made to go far out on the ocean anyway its realy heavy and feels cumbersome getting it on and off the van and getting a spray deck on and a life jacket is also a horridly clumsy feeling, getting into it is a case of balancing and squidging and squeezing and wiggling due to the cockpit design but the moment it floats free of the land the world changes - its part of me, glides over, flies along, slips effortlessly through; are all too weak to catch what it does on water. Tonight the lake was literally like a sheet of glass I wish I had had a camera I thought of taking 2 photos of the same view one with the camera upside down would there be any discernable difference I wondered anyway I discovered new places down the West end by the Dam and a sickle of a moon slipped over the hills and the water was incredibly beautiful, the frogs were loudcroaking to each other, many species have limited frequency hearing so they mostly only hear their own kind or so I heard on the radio in the 80s it makes sense doesn't it and they dont stop when yo uclap your hands only when you do someting to hte water they are sitting in or move past them fast.visual and feely they are I think.. They seemed to be having competitions; one bunch perhaps a crowd covering around 5 meters of banks side would go off for a minute or so then go quiet, a few patches down the way another team would start up for a minute or so and so on back and forth little groups doing the croak croak thing and a few doing the woooohoooo wooohooo wooooo thing and a sort of high pitched weeeeeooooo weeeeooooo oooo oooo I really need some multimedia words don't do it do they. I wasn't going to talk about frogs but there they are they got covered. A few grunts went off and some snuffling thrashing through the undergrowth I guess Jabali were out and about doing piggy things too while in the depths of the kayak a biting flying thing was having a go at my leg just out of reach no matter what I did with my legs I couldn't stop it ouch won't be wearing shorts and a short sleeved T shirt next time. I got as far as almost back to Club Nautico paddling backwards to admire the water making metal waves from my wake when I heard a sound like something chomping grass and there was a glimpse of some deer in the trees, then a wake and a plop and an otter popped its head out a few meters away turned over and started munching on a troita I saw otters near Achmelvich in the 80s and Porth Nanven in the late 90s but not as calm and relaxed as this one, two minutes later there are a whole family of them swimming around me pushing and shoving each other then just gone like nothing had been there, animals are good at that you see a deer and it becomes part of the woods in seconds and isn't there any more even though it must be there really. A few paddle strokes and I was back to lumbering over the land ungainly awkward and as I drove away I could see that I too was just gone as if I had never been there but that is an illusion like the animals we leave little bits of ourselves behind every where we go - the odd hair, a few threads from our clothes, some cast off skin cells, some food in a few mosquitos tummies that will leave a legacy of moelcules in generations of offspring, a tiny tiny bit of my garden maybe off the bottom of my shoes, rubber from my tyres atishooo more cells cast into the world before I head home... I almost gone and never gone; there by proxy through a scatter of little legacies. I guess some bits might make it through the dam down the river and into the sea to join all the other bits I and you have left in the sea. My take on the world is sort of scientist with a hint of maybe, but when I start to think long term I am more scientist - a few billion years pass where am I where are all the bits that were me... Joni rekoned stardust and golden - that seems about right to me and quite a pretty thing to be too.