Welcome to Day 11 of 31 Days of A Sense of Place. Sundays are devoted to field trips, relaxing time spent in one spot so we can visually take in its singular sense of place.
Today, I’m going to take us to Kezar Lake, in Sutton, NH, a 170-acre lake with a maximum depth of 27 feet. It’s got a small wooded beach and picnic area, a launch area for kayaks and canoes, a perfect 3-mile walking path around it (mostly an asphalt tertiary road), and a view of nearby Kearsarge Mountain. It’s home to one loon pair each season, nesting eagles, beavers, and other birds, insects, amphibians and reptiles, plants and fungi.
I walk it a few times per month and see something new every time. I’m not the only one; many people in the area walk around this lake regularly and have come to view it as part of “home.”
I hope you enjoy exploring it with me.
As always, hovering with your cursor over a photo will show a caption, and clicking on it will show an enlarged, captioned version.
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First, the landscape of the lake, from January to December:
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The area by the outflow is always interesting. Photos from March to November.
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The picnic area is mostly wooded, with picnic tables, grills, and not much else — except a view. Photos from March to November.
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The scenery along the road isn’t shabby, either. Photos from Feb. to December.
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Some of the houses around the lake are seasonal, some year-round. Many are lovely, with extensive gardens. As you can see, I have a particular fondness for one shed. Photos from May to November.
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I’m a devotee of fungi, simply for its beauty and weirdness, though I don’t forage it or eat it. Kezar has great variety of fungi for such a small area. Photos from August to October.
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I’ve identified a lot of new-to-me plants in my 5 years walking this (near) circle around the lake, and found familiar flowers and berries here as well. Photos from May to October.
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And the wildlife! Unfortunately, so many of the animals I come across are dead, almost all killed by car: porcupine, birds, snakes, frogs, caterpillars, voles, snapping turtles, dragonflies. I won’t post those here. And so far I haven’t gotten a good photo of a loon or eagle, though I see them quite often. Photos from March to November.
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“There are some delightful places in this world which have a sensual charm for the eyes. One loves them with a physical love. We people who are attracted by the countryside cherish fond memories of certain springs, certain woods, certain ponds, certain hills, which have become familiar sights and can touch our hearts like happy events.
Sometimes indeed the memory goes back towards a forest glade, or a spot on a river bank or an orchard in blossom, glimpsed only once on a happy day, but preserved in our heart.” ― Guy de Maupassant, Selected Short Stories
I’m grateful to have this place as part of my place.
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Thanks for checking in. Be sure to see what the other 31 Dayers are writing about.
This project is a bit like Wallace Stevens’ poem Thirteen Ways of Looking At A Blackbird, in that I’m writing about a sense of place from vantage points that may not obviously connect with each other. I’m not going to attempt to tie them together. In the end, these 31 days of looking at a sense of place may overlap, contradict, form a whole, or collapse like a flan in a cupboard, as Eddie Izzard would say. That remains to be seen. Thanks for stopping by.
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