by Dan Jones
Regular readers of this blog may remember that about this time last year, I wrote a post about Kremer Lake, which is an absolutely gorgeous gem of a lake just off Highway 38 in Itasca County.
As you may have guessed, I once again journeyed to Itasca County on my annual fishing vacation and spent some time on this, one of my favorite lakes ever.
To recap, Kremer Lake is small, at only 76 acres. It’s surrounded entirely by the Chippewa National Forest and there is not a single man-made structure of any kind on its shoreline. The lake is deep for its size at 86 feet and that depth allows a resident population of brown and rainbow trout to survive in the lake. They are regularly stocked by the DNR.
The only access to the lake is a slight widening of the shoulder of the road, just big enough for two vehicles to park. There’s a little sign informing people that it is a trout lake and a skinny trail a foot wide that snakes through the forest for less than a hundred yards. At the end of the trail is a small bluff on which some towering red pines stand. Their roots snake through the rocky, red soil, forming a twisted, meandering staircase down to the lake.
On the shore, there’s a small area where it’s obvious many have stood and sat while they fished. There are forked sticks left in place at the water’s edge that no one would have any cause to remove because, well, that’s where your fishing pole sits while you wait for a trout to bite.
The standard fishing method is pretty basic. A whole night crawler on a smallish hook with light line and a heavy weight to be able to cast it out to the deepest water you can without flinging the bait off your hook.
Then, you sit and wait.
And you wait.
While you wait under the boughs of those giant red pines, you can’t help but notice how astoundingly beautiful this place is.
In the cool of the early morning, the lake is frequently as flat as a street made of clear gold. The water is an enchanting, astounding blue-green, emerald- turquoise color. Standing all around the lake are towering dark balsams, each one with a peak like a church steeple. The red pines and white pines seem to raise their arms in worship to the One True God. The birches stand in silent praise, clothed in white-robed splendor.
It is a place where all of creation can be seen to proclaim His glory.
It’s like a cathedral.
The other thing you can’t help but notice as you sit in the Designated Fishing Pew are the bass.
Right in front of where everybody sits to fish, just a few feet from the edge of the lake, there are about a dozen largemouth bass that cruise back and forth. They range from three inches to about a foot long. They seem unafraid of humans and will even quickly come near you if you rise from your seat.
See, a bass is not a fish that God designed to really and truly thrive in a trout lake. While trout prefer water temperatures around 60 degrees, largemouth bass prefer a more balmy 72 degrees or so. The waters of Kremer Catherdral probably only get that warm around the very edges and only at the warmest time of year.
Nonetheless, the bass survive here by having adapted to their situation, as one quickly figures out when one reels in to check bait.
The split second you bring that nightcrawler near shore, those bass aggressively rush in and attempt to steal it right off your hook. They have obviously had a lot of practice in this maneuver, which is why they gather around you when you stand up to reel in.
The little bass are very, very aggressive because they have to be. There is not a lot of food in a trout lake and I suspect that more than one angler has found it amusing to feed them excess nightcrawlers like ducks are fed bread in a park once they have given up on catching a trout. (Yours truly included.)
So, as I sat there on the shore of the cathedral drinking in its beauty and marveling at my school of pet bass, I noticed a tiny speck above my head.
It was hard to get it into focus due to my advancing age, but eventually I was able to see a small spider hanging by a thin strand of web, more or less directly over where the bass were cruising.
He was a little smaller than the average daddy long-legs I see in my basement, and he was slowly and carefully descending toward the surface of the lake.
The web was attached to a bough in the red pine at least 15 feet from the surface of the lake and he was expertly falling into what I was sure would be his imminent demise. If he so much as touched the water, those bass would snap him up in a tiny spider heartbeat.
Then, about a foot from the water, the spider stopped.
He paused, and it occurred to me that even the slightest breeze would send this spider who probably weighed less than a grain of sand swinging who-knows-where. But the wind was completely calm and the spider waited.
Could he see the bass? Did he know about the bass? Amazingly, there were none near him.
And, in the blink of an eye, he descended exactly just far enough to take two quick drinks from the lake and crawl a foot back up his strand of silk –safely out of reach of the bass.
They never knew he was there.
I watched as the spider artfully crawled back up that single strand, remembering that I read somewhere that spiders eat the webs they no longer use to recycle the proteins in the silk.
I was astounded by the work, the effort, the precision, and the danger this spider went through for what was probably just a tiny fraction of a drop of water.
But God cares for that little spider, giving it all those abilities. Even in this place of incredible beauty, even in the cathedral, there is a striving. There is an effort required for life to take place. The web of life (even corrupted by sin as it is) is amazing beyond description.
And it made me think how blessed we all are. Not only do we have access to fresh, clean water pretty much whenever we want it without the risk of being eaten alive by giant predators, we have free access to the living water that is Jesus Christ.
Jesus, the King who came down from the cathedrals of Heaven, rose up from the grave that we would have life not just abundantly, but eternally.
So, as we listen to Kinship Christian Radio and we hear the songs of praise and worship and the preaching and witness over the air waves, know that He died and rose again for all of us. Know that none of us are spiders hanging from a thread. His love is for all. Bass and spiders and trout all live and move and have their being in the cathedral that worships and adores Him, the Great I AM.
And we are His masterpiece, treasured above all.
Today’s Praise
“Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost. Isaiah 55:1 NIV