The Lake Where You Live

September 6

A thunderclap yesterday morning made me flinch in my office chair. The rain came, and not far behind it a chilling wind that seemed to slam the door shut on summer.

I wasn’t disappointed, because living here full-time has taught me that summer isn’t the only or even the best time to enjoy a lake. For me, autumn takes that crown.

For two-plus decades, when my family and I were tourists visiting Birch Lake for one August week per year, I dreamed of what it would be like to experience a lake in other seasons. A few times I got a glimpse, on September weekend fishing trips to a favorite lake in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.

Now, I can enjoy the whole expanse of autumn. It’s peaceful here on the lake. The owners of the seasonal cabins have mostly gone home, the ski boats and Jet Skis put away. There’s no radio music from the cottages, no campfires sending white woodsmoke skyward. 

Many anglers give it up for the year and turn their attention to hunting ducks or grouse, or practicing with bows and sighting in rifles for deer season. And so the lake lies quiet, I have little or no competition for my favorite fishing spots.

Somehow now, on days of crystal skies, Birch Lake looks more intensely blue. Maybe it’s the drier air, devoid of humid haze, letting more pure sunlight through to strike the water, which then scatters more of those blue wavelengths to our eyes. Or maybe it’s the blue contrasting with the shoreline trees as they start to turn, the colors gaining in coverage and brilliance, right up to the end-of-month carotene-xanthophyll orgy. 

Meanwhile, lake life takes on the urgency of preparing for winter. Above, on and below the surface, the pace of life quickens. The ducks we see are not a mother and ducklings placidly paddling. They’re visitors making migratory stops, or just passing through, three or five in a group, bee-lining straight across the lake, vanishing beyond the treetops. 

Before long the loons will change their colors, the sleek charcoal head and white-on-black body giving way to a pattern of white and muted brownish gray. They’ll head south soon, making one last set of rapid-fire splashes as they run and flap along the surface to get airborne.

The cooling water rouses the fish from the torpor of August, and they begin feeding to fatten up for the season under ice; they’re hungry to the point of recklessness. Back in May, I enticed walleyes using small jigs tipped with skinny two-inch-long fatheads. Now under slip bobbers I soak plump four- to six-inch suckers; the walleyes and smallmouth bass take them greedily. 

Even the lake itself is readying for winter. The chill evening air draws heat from the surface layer of warmer water, until it matches the temperature of the colder water below. Wind and waves then give the entire lake a thorough stir, infusing it with oxygen — a long, deep cleansing breath. 

Day by day the air gets brisker, the water cooler, the trees’ reds and oranges and yellows brighter. I savor September. I’ll miss it when at last it turns the corner and is gone. 

Ted Rulseh is a writer, author and lake advocate who lives on Birch Lake in Oneida County. His new book, “Ripple Effects,” has been released by UW Press. You can learn about it by visiting my website at thelakeguy.net.