Submitted photo The call of a loon marks another spring signpost in a season that has been inconsistent.

The call rang out from one side of the lake and was echoed from the other by a different set of voices as I finished off the morning’s work at the lake cabin. Having been a long winter, I had seemingly for just a second forgotten what the loud warbling was going on between the two sets of birds on either end of the lake. Just like the first robin’s tweets of early spring take a moment to register in my brain, this holler over the clear spring water recently freed of ice lingered until I’m certain my eyes lit up and I stood straight on the stained wood of the front porch, push broom in hand. Having not heard them upon my arrival two nights prior, nor the day before, I shouted with joy. 


“The loons are back,” I hollered to my wife just inside the front door of the family place on the south shore, the smile on my face transferring into my excited yell to match the calling waterfowl. 
For some reason it felt early, but that may have been a function of this slow moving gray spring, and the fact that the black-and-white birds had been gone since last Labor Day or so. Likely, it was much like Gandalf or any other wizard in the “Lord of the Rings,” and the loons had arrived precisely when they meant to. Histrionically, I felt in the moment that they had arrived at just the time I needed them as well. After moving deck furniture, cleaning up the shoreline berm between lawn and sand that had been torn up by the ice heaves just a couple of weeks ago, and getting a first mow in following some leaf raking, like a herald’s horn, the call was uplifting and a reminder that spring was here and soon the rest of the openwater calendar would roll out behind it. 


In a season hallmarked with false starts, cold stretches, and canceled early fishing trips due to wind, snow and chilly rains, the warmth of the Sunday morning sun and the chatter of the loons just returned to the lake had me thinking positive thoughts for the upcoming walleye opener and a return trip to the cabin next weekend, especially since much of the preparatory activity had been completed in advance and the focus could be on fishing. Perhaps the elbow grease expended on those projects would be enough of an ante to find a pot of gold in next weekend’s angling efforts. And even if it isn’t, with no snow in the near-term forecast, a precipitation free opener with less work and more angling, no matter the results, would be a reward all its own along with time spent with family doing the things we enjoy most outside. 


While there’s no guarantee the start-and-stop motions we’ve experienced this spring will smooth out into a gradual increase in temperature, sunny days, and better conditions in rapid course, there’s the general idea we’ll see improvement that comes with every season. Until then, the signs keep mounting, be they the unfurling of the first leaf buds on the shoreline basswood trees, the first hatch of buzzing midge clouds at the water’s edge, or the excited tremolos of loons just returned to favorite waters … in our outdoors.