A Fine Day For A Farewell Paddle

My friend Sue Pierce calls the three of us nature explorers -- herself, Ruth Brooks, and me -- "The Three Graces" because we so often wander the woods and climb the hills and paddle the waters together as a trio. But I would alter that moniker to "The Three GraceED,"  because we are so truly graced to have so many wonderful places to explore on foot or by canoe here in northeastern New York.  One of our favorite wonderful places is Lens Lake, a quiet mountain-ringed, forest-shored, bog-islanded lake up a long ascending road from the village of Stony Creek in Warren County.  We three friends had hoped to paddle this beautiful lake early last Tuesday, as a final co-adventure before our friend Ruth headed to her winter home in Florida very soon.  But our plans were canceled that day by cold temps and brisk winds making any paddling adventure not only miserable but also risky, in our low-to-the water solo canoes.  But lucky for us, that weather changed to delightful by this past Saturday.  Yes, it was still nippy enough for longjohns to feel welcome while starting out, but oh! the lake was nearly as still as glass, the better to mirror the surrounding autumn glory and for us to enjoy a splendid farewell paddle with our dear friend Ruth.

 

We won't see Ruth again until she comes back north again next spring, but we hope she carries with her some memories of how gorgeous an October paddle on an Adirondack lake can be. And Sue and I will retain our memories of how much we love to just BE with her, as each of us shares our delight in and our knowledge of our nature finds, as well as our more personal stories and concern for one another through life's pleasures and difficulties. I feel so profoundly blessed to have such friends as Ruth and Sue. I love to see Ruth so content in her own little solo canoe, one that gives her access to places as rich in delights as Lens Lake is.

And what a day on the lake we had! How wonderful, to witness this colorful shoreline forest!

Especially when such vibrant blueberry shrubs and this parade of tall pines are reflected almost perfectly by the still water!

The surrounding mountainsides were a veritable crazy-quilt of vivid colors, edged by a hem of dark conifers.

All around the lake's bouldered shore, tree-topped rocks were covered with colorful shrubbery, the beauty amplified in shimmering reflection.

Out in the lake itself, even otherwise barren boulders held surprising bits of prettiness.

Several shoreline shrubs surprised us with their own "bits of prettiness."  The twigs of Labrador Tea held evergreen starbursts of leaves and also rosy cone-like buds. These are not buds that will open soon, but buds that will safely shelter next spring's flower clusters throughout the coming very-cold Adirondack winter.

Who would expect to find these bright-pink Sheep Laurel flowers blooming this time of year? This is ordinarily a species that flowers in June! But because I've been finding a few repeat-blooming flowers as late as October for several years, I would have been quite surprised and disappointed if we had not discovered some this year.  And we sure did! A little farewell flower bouquet for our friend Ruth!

Since Lens Lake is known for its acres and acres of floating bog mats, we also would have expected to find plenty of sphagnum moss even as we paddled along the shore.  And so we did, in several vivid colors.  This cluster held long leaves of a bright lime-green. (And I bet that Ruth, a serious student of mosses, would know the names of these sphagnums.)

This was a fallen tree stump nearly completely covered with a mass of ruby-red sphagnum.

Much of the floating bog mats here are covered with golden-yellow sphagnum, and this patch served as home to several tiny coal-black Earth-tongue fungi.

The bog mats are also studded with many plants of Northern Pitcher Plants, some of which had achieved their optimum level of scarlet saturation.

Abundant patches of Large Cranberry vines sprawled across the bog mats, and some of those patches held a few ripe-red fruits.  Not many, though, which suggested to me that local folks might have already started harvesting them.

After witnessing all these vividly colored plants, I was surprised to find myself delighted by the more subtle colors of this nearly leafless shrub that had sprawled across a shoreline rock.  What was it that delighted me so? The sprightliness of its silvery-hued twigs, the lower twigs gracefully arching downward while its upper twigs reached for the sky? The tiny remnants of various colored leaves that nestled amid the twigs like ornaments in a Christmas tree? Or its vaguely animal-like appearance, like some chubby, furry but sharp-quilled creature, a vegetable hedgehog or porcupine? I don't know. But I still stop to gaze at it and smile each time I review this post.

Here's another organism that amuses and delights me, each time I visit Lens Lake. These masses of underwater transparent greenish jelly are formed by the colonial microscopic single-celled protozoan called Ophrydium versatile. The individual cells line up side-by-side in the "blob"and attach themselves to a jelly-like substance they secrete.  They are symbiotic with microscopic Chlorella algae that live inside the Ophrydium cells and give the blob its green color.  Over the years of paddling here, I have found masses of it as small as a golfball and as large as a bathtub, and my friends and I agreed we saw more than ever this year. This would be a great health report for the lake, since Ophrydium requires clean, transparent, low-nutrient waterbodies with low levels of dissolved organic carbon to thrive. So my friends and I should have other years left to paddle these waters together again.

The low-nutrient aspect of Lens Lake's water is evidenced by the large acreage of acidic bog mats that populate the surface of the lake.  And such bogs are often home to tall stalks of Cottongrass that sway and dance, each stem seeming to move to its own music, as they were doing today, even on a day with very little wind.  I will pretend that the Cottongrass was simply waving our friend Ruth farewell as she prepares to head south.

Longtime readers of this blog may remember this photo I once posted on my blog of a Merganser family atop a boulder in Lens Lake. It first was posted on nearly the same October date back in 2018.

And guess who was occupying the very same mid-lake boulder this time as we paddled Lens Lake this October?  Not the same brood of Mergansers, of course, but could it be possible the occupancy lease to this perch passes down from generation to generation?  Ha ha!

I was sorry our approach to the boulder disturbed the Merganser family.  But considering their history, I'm sure they will soon be back atop their favorite perch.  May this be a good omen that we, the Three Graces -- Ruth, Sue, and I -- will again return to this exquisite lake, when Ruth returns to adventure with us in the spring.