Twenty years ago, up north

I didn't spend enough time out on a lake. There's a regret, if, at my age, I'm looking for one. We waited too long to head "up north" to see what treasures there lay in state. These shots are all 20 years old--2005. I should have done more of it--even when the kids were little. 

What was I doing instead? Probably hunkered down right there, the screen bright with possibilities, the keypad humming. 

I never was much of a fisherman, never went after it like a science, and therefore never caught much (although there is a file with this bunch--three handsome walleyes). But the moments out on the water, by myself, a few loons around to chase--they are precious now, in part because they were so few. Mostly, always, I'd be chasing the dawn.

I am an adoptee in prairie culture, but I remember the approximate time when I determined that a featureless prairie could be just plain. President Donald Trump would hate a prairie; after all, there's nothing there. What he doesn't know--and never will--is that sometimes what's not there is beautiful, hence wonderful.

Sorry, a tangent.

There are treasures "up north," treasures I would have liked to locate, camera in hand--shots like reeds in cold water:

golden lakefront mornings--

a family of mallards--

 

a week of morning light.

just little things--

Shoulda' all right.