When Summer Grows Quiet

Labor Day Weekend on Lake Minocqua

There are places where you notice the changing seasons by looking at a calendar.

In Minocqua, you can sometimes hear it.

When we visited over the Fourth of July weekend, Lake Minocqua sounded like summer. Boats crossed the water throughout the day. Jet skis carved wakes across the lake. Water skiers raced past the shoreline. The piers were full, and the lake seemed to be in almost constant motion.

Two months later, we returned to the same condo, on the same lake, for Labor Day weekend.

And almost immediately, something felt different.

Several boats and speedboats on a lake with people enjoying a day of boating and water activities, with trees on the shoreline in the background.

We arrived Friday evening, September 4, and expected the quiet to be temporary. Perhaps everyone else would arrive Saturday morning. After all, this was Labor Day weekend—the traditional final holiday weekend of summer.

Saturday came.

The crowds didn't.

A scenic view of a lake with calm water, surrounded by green trees and small houses along the shoreline. The sky is blue with a few white clouds.

The weather certainly wasn't keeping anyone away. The skies were remarkably clear throughout the weekend, interrupted only occasionally by thin white clouds. Mornings and evenings were cool, generally somewhere in the 50s and 60s, but afternoons warmed comfortably into the upper 70s.

It was beautiful.

And Lake Minocqua was quiet.

Not deserted. Not silent. Just...different.

The frenetic energy I remembered from July had disappeared. Instead of photographing people racing across the lake, I found myself noticing the smaller things.

A water lily sat in full bloom among the pads, its white petals reflected in the dark blue water.

A white water lily floating on a dark pond with lily pads around it.

It isn't the kind of scene that demands attention. Perhaps that's precisely why it seemed appropriate.

The lake had slowed down enough to notice it.

The Lake Belongs to Wildlife Again

The loons were still there, of course.

Without the constant procession of recreational boats, there were long periods when they seemed to have enormous stretches of water almost entirely to themselves.

A bird, possibly a loon, spreads its wings while floating on water.

The bald eagles were equally conspicuous.

A pair spent hours during the mornings perched high in the spruce trees overlooking the lake. Sometimes they simply sat there, seemingly as content to watch Lake Minocqua as I was.

Two bald eagles perched on a tall evergreen tree with green pine cones against a clear blue sky.

Eventually, patience was rewarded.

One of the eagles left its perch, dropping through the surrounding branches before opening its enormous wings against the blue September sky.

A bald eagle perched in a pine tree with a blue sky background.

And then came one of those wildlife encounters that happens too far away and too quickly for the photograph you wish you could make.

Far above the opposite shoreline, two bald eagles came together in flight, locked talons and began tumbling through the sky.

Even with 1,200mm of reach, they were tiny in the frame.

The resulting photograph will never be one of my finest eagle portraits. But photography isn't always about producing the perfect image. Sometimes it is simply about preserving something remarkable that you were fortunate enough to witness.

Two bald eagles in mid-air, flying over green trees against a clear blue sky.

After a very dramatic cartwheeling freefall, the eagles separated and flew away.

Lake Minocqua became quiet again.

Even the Piers Were Quiet

The difference extended all the way to the shoreline.

During summer, a pier is usually evidence of human activity—a place for boats to arrive and depart, people to swim, or families to gather.

This weekend, one of the more frequent visitors was a great blue heron.

A heron standing on a wooden dock by the water next to a boat with some fishing poles attached.

It stood motionless at the end of the dock, apparently untroubled by the lack of activity around it.

There were still people enjoying the lake, but they seemed to be doing so at a different pace.

Instead of jet skis and water skiers, I watched anglers drift across the water. On the cool mornings, insulated jackets and flannel shirts had replaced swimsuits and life jackets.

Two men fishing on a red boat with a Honda outboard motor on a lake, with trees and a boathouse in the background.

Nobody appeared to be in much of a hurry.

Perhaps that was the most striking difference between July and September. Lake Minocqua hadn't stopped being used.

It had simply stopped being rushed.

There were few dramatic signs of autumn. The trees remained overwhelmingly green. The afternoons were warm. The sun was bright.

Yet everywhere I looked, there were small indications that the season was beginning to turn.

And on Monday morning, those indications became impossible to miss.

Preparing for What Comes Next

Back on shore, another resident seemed considerably busier.

A black squirrel spent much of its time collecting acorns, carrying them across the grass and burying them one after another.

There was something almost comical about its determination. While everyone else seemed to be slowing down, the squirrel was working relentlessly.

But, of course, it knew something we did too.

Summer doesn't last forever in northern Wisconsin.

A young deer wandered through the area as well, another quiet visitor that might have been easy to overlook during the activity of midsummer.

A black squirrel sitting on the grass, holding a nut with other nuts around its mouth.
A young deer standing on a grassy field with green trees in the background.

The Other End of Summer

Labor Day morning was beautiful.

It was also time to leave.

As I looked toward the nearby boat slips, several were already empty.

A lakeside scene with two trees in the foreground, a boat dock with boats, and a flagpole with an American flag, with a calm lake and a forested shoreline in the background under a clear blue sky.

Then I began noticing trucks pulling empty boat trailers stopping nearby. Owners were preparing their boats to be removed from Lake Minocqua and put into storage for winter.

Winter.

On a sunny morning with green trees and an afternoon temperature that would approach 80 degrees.

It seemed much too early.

But in northern Wisconsin, preparations for the next season don't necessarily wait for the current one to disappear.

The squirrel burying acorns had been doing the same thing all weekend.

And suddenly the contrast with our previous visit seemed complete.

We had been here over the Fourth of July and returned over Labor Day—two holidays that, unofficially at least, serve as bookends to the American summer.

On the Fourth of July, Lake Minocqua was loud, energetic and crowded. Boats and jet skis crossed the water. People skied behind them. The lake felt like a playground.

By Labor Day, the same water told a different story.

The loons drifted across open stretches of lake. Eagles watched from the treetops. A heron occupied a quiet pier. Anglers moved slowly across the morning water. A squirrel buried acorns beneath the trees.

And one by one, boats were beginning to disappear from their slips.

Nothing dramatic had happened.

Summer hadn't ended overnight.

It had simply begun to grow quiet.

And perhaps that was what made this particular weekend on Lake Minocqua so beautiful.