It's The Height of Summer Here.

It’s the height of summer here. The temperature and humidity are usually the same numbers. Most folks find that uncomfortable. I don’t. Being a child of Florida, I relish the tropical wildness of my home state. It might be the American Indian blood from both sides of the family, Cree & Catawba, or just that there aren’t that many native born Floridians. Anyway I feel special.

At sundown this evening, after putting a long day in my hangar, I drove my golf cart down to the lake (we call it a pond but its really a lake in size). The sun had already set and just the milky gray of twilight was left in the sky. The surface of the lake was dead smooth. So much so that the reflection of the trees on the far shore looked like a mirror image. Even a giant CB far to the south was reflected on its surface also. This big boil of clouds towered up to the point where the jet stream had already started tearing off its top. Occasionally it would spark some lighting and it too would eco itself on the surface. To far away to hear any thunder, one could still feel wary of its presents.

Quite. Well for a while anyway. I hear a squawk like call from the south shore of the lake and soon a gray shape looms from the far shadows. With slow majestic effort a giant gray heron appears over the pond and it and its mirror self cross to the northwest, heading for its night time roost. You would normally find him during the day at the edge of the pond but there is good reason the heron does not spend the night there.

That reason soon shows itself. The reflected images on the water of the far trees become alive. Unlike the ones on shore, they dance in disappearing light. Soon I can just make the cause as what looks like a stick floating on the water, is actually making headway toward the middle of the lake. Mr. Gator is out for a swim. No noise, only the rippling reflections giving him away. For whatever reason, Mr. Gator stops, the water goes still and his dark shape milts in with the reflections again.

Total stillness and quite. The first of the stars come out. From the time I first became a navigator, my favorite star was Betelgeuse, a super red giant in Orion. I always loved Orion. It was the first constellation I ever learn to recognize and the unbelievable size of Betelgeuse just made it perfect for one to remember. And there it is, in the same place for thousand of years. And thousand more to come. I imagine that some antediluvian cave man may have sat at the edge of a lake, and like me, stared in wonder at that star.

The surface of the lake is totally dark now. One would think that nothing was happening out there. But a Florida lake at night is full of adventure and danger. The small things become dinner for larger things, which in turn become dinner for something larger. At the top of that chain is Mr. Gator. And I know he is still out there, - - - in the dark.