One of the oldest lineage birds on Earth is the common loon. Fossil records go back about 35 million years to places like Italy, California, and Florida. In 1961, the common loon became the Minnesota state bird and ever since then, Minnesota has protected these beautiful birds. Approximately 12,000 loons call Minnesota lakes home in the summer. Including the peaceful Little Watab lake in St. Joseph, Minnesota. 

My family bought a small lake house during the spring of 2021. We were all excited to have a space where all of our friends and family could gather at to enjoy the beautiful Minnesota summers by the lake. My grandparents live just around the corner, and my dad grew up on the lake. Everything about it felt right, except the bright colors of the walls that resembled a rainbow. We painted, tore down some walls, and built new ones. We bought homey furniture, lake themed wall decor, and everything started coming together. We all loved this place. 

The first summer we owned the property, we noticed a mated pair of loons that would glide around the lake. My family grew to love these loons and a couple weeks into June, two baby loons hatched. The two adult loons would guard the babies, catch fish for them to eat, and even carry them on their backs. We all could tell that this loon family (and all of the loons since that first summer) enjoyed being in the back bay of the lake, compared to the busier main portion of the lake.         

Pontoons, boats, and jetskis would cruise around the lake all summer. I imagine that the loons hated the jet skis most of all. 

No matter how much the adult loons tried to protect the babies, rambunctious teenagers on jet skis sometimes ventured into the tranquil back bay. They would rip around in circles making large waves that would throw the baby loons around in the water. When my family and I would see their shenanigans, we would always worry that they wouldn’t see the loons and hit them. The kids on jet skis would eventually leave our precious little bay and go back to the main lake, parking at their docks until the next time they felt inclined to go rip around again. The waves in the bay would diminish, shortly becoming little ripples until the water returned to its glass-like state. The reflection of the sky, clouds, and trees near the shore would reappear once again, and our seemingly imperturbable bay would return. Once all was calm again, the loons would continue on with their usual activities. They would resume swimming around, hunting for fish, singing their eerie songs, and playing in the water, almost as nothing had made them anxious twenty minutes prior. 

In my life I feel like my emotions and feelings can be really affected by small things that I see or hear about throughout the day. Topics like the latest news, the next school assignment, friendship issues, and stress about my future and college can easily stir up my brain and make me feel like I am anxious about everything going on in and around my life. 

Recently, I have been trying my hardest to stay off of social media to help curb some of the things that can easily give me anxiety or something to worry about. Avoiding social media as best I can has helped, but one thing has helped even more. 

The loons have their calm bay, and I have books.

This semester it seems like I have more free time, or maybe I just have more free time because I have been trying to avoid endless scrolling on Tik Tok. But anyway, with this time I have to myself, I have been turning to books as a way to escape reality for however long I have time to read. I can hide in books that are set in a whole different world, connect with those characters, feel their emotions, and ultimately rid my head of the stressors of the real world. It calms me down, reading is better for your brain than social media, and nothing in my books causes me a spiral of anxiety. Reading has turned into the force that calms the waves of my life. Something might happen in my life where it feels like the water is being stirred up, and I am being tossed around, like the loons after a jet ski outing, but opening my book and falling into the storyline calms my brain.