Invading the quiet of a splendid lake

“This evening I invaded her quiet, my oars stroking softly at her face to send a mirthful rippling to the shore. Nothing else stirred, apart from the multitude of her insect children…”

Country sights and sounds

John Shelley

I think I never saw Carra looking as lovely, with an uncommon air of serenity that evoked within me a full sense of peace and tranquillity, things sadly missing from the greater part of our lives. She lay still, still as a thought in still life, still as the vision of a master painter, her green robes embroidered with a multitude of wildflowers, her countenance lit and coloured by the evening sun.

I would stay here always. Yesterday she had been troubled and had tried to throw me out with angry cries, but I had sat by her side in silence, listening to her troubled sighs and the anxious splashing at her rocky sides. There are days and days, good ones and better, never bad or indifferent.

This evening I invaded her quiet, my oars stroking softly at her face to send a mirthful rippling to the shore. Nothing else stirred, apart from the multitude of her insect children that were dancing as they prepared for their nuptial night. They sparkled as gold dust in the fragrant air, one moment a mushroom cloud, the next a vortex, then a glowing carpet. Light came spilling over the Partry Hills, spreading a yellow stain from the west. Yellow deepened into orange as the sun dipped lower and lower. The eastern horizon blurred gently; the west came into sharp relief.

A dozen curlew flew overhead, so low that I could see the barred markings of their wings and the shimmer in their eyes, piping their way home with their liquid cries that hung, as if draped over the water, long after they had passed. Then came the swallows, chattering excitedly in their many hundreds, young and old alike in searing flight. They fell upon the golden insect hordes as a marauding band to fill their drops for the night. Even so, the number of flies continued to increase beyond number, until the humming of them was loud in my ears.

They began to gather in dense swarms above my head. More crawled thickly over the boat, massing into piles an inch thick – green-bodied chironomids by the million; long-horned caddis in almost equal number, golden yellow olives and the odd late-season mayfly; so many others.

Then came the caenis, fondly known as the angler’s curse. These miniature members of the mayfly family hatch in such vast quantities that trout feast upon them exclusively, stolidly ignoring anything and everything else. They are indescribably beautiful creatures, every last one of them perfectly formed and identical in appearance, with a wingspan of a quarter inch or so, two delicate tails and a translucent, pearl white body. I watched them appear on the surface of the still water as if by magic, marvelling as they took to the air within moments of unfolding their wings.

I was soon covered with them. They fell upon my coat like a living snowstorm, gathering into drifts in the folds of my coat. It became almost impossible to breathe without inhaling them by the dozen, but the spectacle was such that I could not possibly leave.

The miracle was not yet finished. Each of the miniscule caenis, as soon as it was settled comfortably, began to swell inside of its outer skin, to stretch it ’til it rent apart, and then to climb out and fly once more, this time as a new creature, the adult of its kind. I watched the process repeatedly, but the change was accomplished with such dexterity that it was impossible to observe in full. They left behind them a carpet of empty husks with not one out of the countless number, as far as I was able to see, failing to emerge and join the already flying swarms.

Then the light was gone. Given the amount of food that was available there should have been trout hopping all around, but Carra stayed strangely silent. Stars appeared, and then the Milky Way, to light my way home.

As I unloaded the boat she spoke to me as if imparting a secret, an undulating murmur telling me of a gathering breeze out beyond the islands. ‘Come back soon,’ she whispered. I will, if I can.