“Hush!” my mother scolded long, long ago.
“Sound carries over water!”
Playing and splashing in the cold lake by our cabin, my brothers and sisters and I had heard this warning many times before. Even so, we always forgot to keep our voices down.
Instead, my mother’s frequent motto taught us to listen for other sounds that carried over water.
Sometimes, there were sounds like our own that seized our attention first: the joyful laughter of other children jumping off their dock down the shore; or the low chatter of fishermen as their lures plopped one after another into still waters.
Sometimes, soft sounds caught our ear: the gurgle of a sailboat’s tiller as the bow plowed through the waves; the rhythmic drip of a paddle as we stealthily slid our canoe through waterlilies in search of a great blue heron. Sometimes, just the gentle whisper of wind through the trees spoke to us.
Most favorite, though, were the sounds of the wildlife, their songs singing out to us in happy abandon: eagles chattering to their chicks high in a nest; owls hooting in the starlight through the trees; or peeper frogs peeping in the mist of early morning light.
But nothing spoke more to our hearts than the ringing, bell-like songs of loons in flight, the harmony of their music echoing across the sky.
I am always a little melancholy when summer ends, for I will miss these songs of the lake. When nights are cold or days are dreary, it is this symphony of music that leads me back to the splendor of sound carrying over water.
Lullabies serenading me to my dreams.
