BLUE HERON LODGING LOG

Lancaster, WI

9/15/21 2330

 

I had the most incredible, no, singular experience in my 66 years of life last night. It was on the dock, by the slip, on the beach.

But first I must say, the accommodations here have been generous and fine. Our family has relished the deck, the view and our time together.

The location here affords the curious mind with opportunities for discovery, for instance the Driftless Center just upstream and the Effigy Mounds National Monument downstream witch bring me back to last night.

I was restless, not falling to sleep as per usual. A waxing gibbous moon was approaching the bluff here behind. I took the opportunity to shuffle sown to the river.

There I sat. The silence was near deafening. The stars above infinite. I reflected upon those of us who came before.

The waters were still – it was if the entire valley had paused – as if it were about to take a breath   - to inhale – inspire.

I, too, paused – it was a divisional moment. Proceeding forward with the next breath, the next sound, the next sensation, would be separated, aloof, to all those that proceeded.

Then the next tick, the next swing of the pendulum, the serene, somnolent surface of the mighty river began to ripple, to riffle, to be disturbed. The was no atmospheric explanation for this phenomenon - the air, the temperature, the barometric influences, and perhaps, time itself, were suspended just then.

As I watched, the river, excited then, began to fibrillate – to convulse and to slowly bulge as if it were buckling under submarine forces extreme.

A majestic form. primitive in aspect, but yet modern in hydrodynamic design, arose. A long neck extending, almond eye to the side – clearly not a hunter then - and an immense zeppelin body emerging with water rivuleting off, cascading, effervescing about the huge creature’s flanks.  It towered there above me, glistening, its enormity bejeweled in the last filaments of the moon as it sank behind the bluff.

Then slowly, with majestical grace, it reentered the waters, a long bifurcated tail the last of it to be seen as it again enveloped itself below the dark, and strangely, once more undisturbed surface.

I sat there in silence. Eventually a puff of breeze disturbed the air, caressed the river.

Naturally I kept this incident to myself lest my lunacy be confirmed.

However, I feel now compelled to report it. Earlier today, at a visit to the Effigy Mounds National Monument, while viewing from the deck of the wooded overlook on the Pickerel Loop, I looked down and, to my astonishment, saw depicted there, in perfect form, scale, and proportion, a mound in the exact image of the creature I witnessed here last night.

Hurriedly I sought the guide for explanation and read there the following:
               “Spirit Fish Mounds like the one you see before here are thought to be fanciful depictions of a mystical, mythological nature representing a spiritual entity. The form surely was of significance to the early residents of the valley for mounds of this exact style, shape and whimsy are rendered in numerous sites along the Mississippi…” etc.

Fanciful? Mystical? Whimsy? Don’t be deceived by our own quaint notions of reality.