This is the day
September 9, 2012

My head is spinning with the whirlwind wedding weekend activities!  150 guests converged on Black Bear Lodge in St. Germaine, Wisconsin, to fete Chris' niece Suzie and her bridegroom, Joe.  We met up with Mom & Dad Thursday night for dinner & began meeting other guests then in the Bear’s Den restaurant.  The lodge complex is an ideal venue for this - cabins, restaurant and bar, lake and a perfect place to set up the reception tent.  All is appropriately rustically northwoodsy, a special treat for the contingent from San Diego, where Suzie and Joe live.

We spent as much time as possible with the “rents”; it is just awful to live so far away from them.  Chris was the ceremony musician, we were involved in rehearsal planning for the outdoor affair.  Weather worries over the cool, cloudy conditions were alleviated by the forecast for warmer and clearing.

Outdoor activities (well okay, some were more bar-side) continued through Friday, culminating in a wonderful catered picnic in the tent.

Wedding day dawned not so clear after all, but with a hopeful sky, temps remaining in the high 50s.  Joe and his best man arrived via boat, climbed up from the shore and waited for the bride to emerge from her cabin - and waited and waited.  After all, they’ve been together for nine years, so what’s the big rush now? 

And . . . with impeccable timing, the sky opened up, and I don’t mean by clearing.  It began to sprinkle; it began to rain; it worked up to quite a deluge until the groom attempted to call off the location and move everything and everyone elsewhere; however, the bride, still hidden, declared the show must go on and the guests concurred. 

Out came available umbrellas, ponchos, hoods; those not as prepared scrambled to shelter under the cabin eaves and beneath trees.  A helpful guest volunteered to help me hold the keyboard case over the instrument lest it be ruined . . . and the shortened ceremony continued . . . Dad's pronouncement of the Psalm: "This is the day the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it" brought smiles and laughter.

And the music went on . . .

Dad is ready during (dry) rehearsal.

Suzie, Joe & Dad

Dad was the minister who united them and what a trooper he was as he got drenched under the superb but very drippy arbor built of unpeeled pine by Suzie’s dad Steve.

The rustic theme carried from the invitations clear through to every aspect, including table centerpieces & place cards to the wedding evening pig roast reception dinner and bonfire on the beach, all reflecting the bride and groom’s tastes and lifestyle - memorable weekend with memorable people in all ways.

Chris & sibs: Kyle and John

Sunday morning brought a revolving door, almost literally, as guests and wedding party were in and out of Mom & Dad’s cabin to exchange warm tearful farewells, a fine job of extensive milling around.



Mermaid Lake, snapping turtle babies, loon . . .

Mom & Dad and we followed Steve & Kyle out to their cottage on Mermaid Lake.  What an inviting, comfortable retirement home they have created there!  I was entranced by every aspect of the setting on the private lake and the house itself.  Much too soon came our own goodbyes; sad to live so distant from those we love.

Our next two nights arranged, we ventured out to the beach at our RV park.  Somehow, I had a vision of kayaking and fishing while we were here, but precious time with family came first, so that will wait until another time.  It did seem more than odd not to at least take a look at the lake on which our RV park is perched, Arrowhead by name, so we gathered up spotting scope, camera and binoculars for a saunter on down there, after watching three bald eagles circling lazily overhead. 

The lake was much larger than I expected and barren of waterfowl except for a lone ring-billed gull bobbing along without so much as a ruffled feather and one other bird that we would not have identified without the scope - a common loon - my big excitement for the day.  I would have hated to leave here without getting a loon.  I hear so much about them and their call (Kyle says they even have loon calling competitions), but the only other one I’ve ever seen was on Lake Mohave in Arizona.  Seems their habitat includes the Colorado River flyway.

No other real birding this stop, but we’ve enjoyed watching the antics at our feeders of ruby-throated hummingbirds, red-breasted nuthatch, white-breasted nuthatch, American goldfinch and black-capped chickadee.

On our walk to the lake, I noticed what I first thought was a tiny toy on the ground, but closer inspection revealed that it was a miniscule baby snapping turtle!  What an astounding thing to find!  And not only that, as we were carting it down to the lake, we found five more, three of them dead.  The three survivors seemed to be so cold they were scarcely moving.  As I cupped one in my hands, it warmed up and began to scrabble around in there.

We surmise they had hatched very recently judging by their sand-coverings, and these had not found the distant water before cold temperatures caused them to start shutting down.  Being completely unaware of baby snapping turtles’ nursery needs, we deposited them on the sand at water’s edge and saw them revive and swim when they got into the water.  We hope that was the right thing to do - our very own snapping turtle rescue.  They surely had lots of siblings that were earlier successful at gaining watery habitat.

Mama turtle could hardly have deposited her eggs any further from water.  As best as I can tell, this country is entirely made up of big rivers, little rivers, big lakes, little lakes, big streams, little streams; whatever is not open water consists of bogs, swamps and marshes.  In between, there is occasionally just enough terra firma on which to construct roads and buildings.