Delight at Kidney Pond

What can I say? During our recent three day stay at Kidney Pond in Baxter State Park, I really got into clouds in a big way. Which was a good thing, since there were a lot of clouds around, and when they mingled with sunlight it was especially easy to enjoy their shapes, colors, and movements.

And as you can see from the photos above, I really got excited by what the pond (lake, really) waters did with the colors of the sky, the various shades of cloud color, its own transparency to the pebbly bottom, and the nearly constant motion of small waves toward the shore at my feet.

So I took several photos. Well, more than several. I even took my first ever videos using Anna's basic point and shoot digital camera. (If I've ever used a video camera before, I'm forgetting. We've never owned one, I know that much.) They may not be prizewinners, but I had a huge amount of fun taking them and just basically dancing with delight noticing the patterns!

Here are just a couple of my color-patterns-on-the-water photos. Just to get me back into the bloggerhood.

An Interlude: A Poem

After Midnight: Kidney Pond


After midnight I woke up,
shook off sleep and stumbled
out of the cabin into the darkness
that was—amazing!—full of light.

The whole sky was spread before me
twice: the white spool of the moon, a few
milky blue-grey clouds, and a thousand stars
drifted above the pond and in the pond

without distortion. Then some faint breath
of wind or gentle fish ripple
wobbled the moon, and two
glittering threads traveled across the dark

silk of the pond—two luminous strands unraveled
from the spool of the moon. The air was chill
and damp; the beckoning of sleep
a warm cocoon. Even so

I lingered in the clear air, alone
and happy, an accidental witness
of this dazzling secret, this
extravagant beauty opening in the dark

after midnight—unfolding one way or
another every night, for no one
in particular, even for
no one at all.