Cold Dawn On Pyramid Lake

Think 37 degrees is too cold to go for a morning paddle?  Yeah, that thermometer gave me pause for a moment Saturday morning when I arose at Pyramid Lake.  But then I turned around and looked at the dawn sun touching the trees with gold and a sapphire sky stretching from horizon to horizon, and I heard the loons calling from somewhere beyond the island.  The choice was easy.  Out I went.

Yeah, I sure could have used some warm gloves, but the rest of me was snug in warm clothes as I paddled toward the eastern end of the lake, keeping to the shaded shore so the rising sun wouldn't blind me.

Then I crossed to the sunlit shore and drifted along, feeling the warmth of a late-spring sun on my back and basking in the glow of this birch tree gilded by dawning light.

I don't think there's any place on earth more lovely than an Adirondack lake, surrounded by mountains and dotted with islands, on a sunlit morning when the water lies shining and reflective as molten silver.

I was here at Pyramid Lake this weekend to help prepare my beloved Pyramid Life Center for a new season of retreats and recreational offerings. I've been coming here for 24 years, ever since the 1991 (first!) Iraq war drove me to seek refuge among others who believed in the sinfulness and futility of war.  That was a peacemakers' retreat with the Jesuit priest and war resister Daniel Berrigan, and I've been coming back every year since then.  How many wars ago was that?

Since I find such peace and joy and friendship and natural beauty here, I volunteer both spring and fall to help open and close the center, and my task has always been to clean all the guest rooms in the main lodge, 17 of them, plus all the bathrooms and meeting rooms and lounges in the building.  The rooms are not fancy, but they are comfortable, and when I'm done with them, they sure are clean!  This was my room this weekend.

I did not have much time this year to go botanizing, but I did stop along the entrance road where marble boulders climb the banks, and it's here where the lovely Purple Virgin's Bower blooms every spring.  My visits to Pyramid Life Center don't always coincide with this flower's bloom time, but, lucky for me, this year's visit did.