Bobcat Lake -- A Love Story

Two days and thirty-six years and ago, Heather married me.

Yeah, I married her too. Yet you can tell just by looking I was the dumb part of the deal and it'd never have happened had this formidable woman not chosen to take on such a nettlesome task.

I'm me, after all.

The first week of our honeymoon, we camped at the Presque Isle unit above Superior near the far western border of the Porcupine Mountains Wilderness. Shortly after arrival, I carelessly bounced the business end of an ax across the back of my hand.

Dr. Heather sprang to action and healed me. Today, I can't even find the scar.

We spent the second week of our honeymoon at Bobcat Lake, surrounded by the massive Ottawa National Forest. Our preference for both the spare, dry campsite atop the bluff overlooking mighty Superior and the messy one on intimately equal footing with swampy Bobcat was already well established.

If we considered any other destination to revel in officially sanctioned love, I don't recall it.

At seventy-six acres and maxing out at about eighteen feet deep, Bobcat is a modest lake. Most days a fitting venue for a canoe, even sometimes leeward the great forest when the breeze blows hard.

The thing about Bobcat Lake is that you're never, ever alone. Not even close.

Frequently, I hunt a bay alongside Bald Eagles. Sometimes I do better than the birds and they scowl at me.

But then, my game's different than theirs. Of necessity, raptors come to kill. Of necessity, I don't.

Not for decades now. Not since a seminal event in my life unexpectedly played out on a similarly gorgeous morning a few steps up from here, under the trees:

Used to be the main beaver works ran a long ways back toward the woods, where at that boundary the beavers engineered a complex series of step dams, complete with sluice gates. It was there we encountered a rare (for Michigan) Canada Lynx, still the only one in our experience.

While on the lake I've watched Osprey hit the water at speed, flap their wings twice to shed liquid diamonds, then rise with a fish and soar off into an azure sky above trackless wilderness.

At Bobcat, everybody eats.

One morning I sat frustrated in the canoe, shrouded by dense fog and becalmed on placid waters. Entreaty went unanswered. No fish came to play. I pondered my miserable fate.

Crunch…Crunch…Crunch, broke the dead silence.

I looked all around. Directly behind, an otter stood impossibly high out of the water, contentedly eating a fish while watching me.

"You're the reason I'm not catching anything," I scolded. The otter was unperturbed.

Often, at Bobcat I'm accompanied by loons. They're the signature bird of the Northwoods and much revered.

It's said loons are sensitive to our presence and we should keep our distance whenever possible. That's tough to do, when they follow you around. To date, I've managed to not take the loon's lilting song as laughter at my fishing prowess.

That stare, on the other hand…

Down from the beaver works where the inflow sent by the forest feeds the lake, there's a seasonably variable but otherwise permanent expanse of wild wetland. Look close when the light's just right and you'll find that strung along slender reeds waving in the breeze an entire kingdom of spiders thrives, suspended above the water, beneath the sky.

There's all manner of life there too. Well, call much of that ex-life. When the light's not right, the gossamer kingdom vanishes.

Though it can be sharp-edged and fraught to live at, the place is magnificently fecund.

At Bobcat Lake we've seen glowworms turn grassy shoreline into starry night. Predawn fog rise thick, then dissipate with the sun. We've watched towering storms bear down fast over the forest's crown, lightning leading the way. We listened as the woods above and all around roared with indignation at the lashing, with only a sheath of rip-stop nylon between us and the fury.

Always, the sun returns.

In warm weather or chill, still winds or fierce, caught in shimmering light or with midday turned to midnight on the storm, I love the diverse company found at my lake. No less so, the place itself.

Landscapes speak. Those we've not altered overmuch speak plain. Some offer a glimpse of what the world might be like without us.

Perennial host to riotous life and death, hidden by the mighty Ottawa Forest but for a winding gravel road out from hardscrabble Marenisco, little Bobcat Lake speaks not only to the myriad critters that call it home. It also speaks to me. And for that, I am blessed.

Plainly put, ours is a longstanding love affair. No more, no less. Don't worry, Heather knows and wholeheartedly approves.

So you'll understand how happy I am to have once again returned to the embrace of my love...