ONE OF THE KETTLE LAKES OF WISCONSIN
And this is why, like fruit on a tree, the youngest lakes are found at the top. Since the glacier melted from the foot of the range upward the lower lakes were the first to be born and the first to pass away; while the lakes higher up on the mountain were the last to be born and the last to pass away.
II. The Moods of the Lakes
Lakes are like the rivers and the sea; they have their moods. In sunshine and storm, in wind and calm, and from season to season they show many changes. As we already know they are great sleepy heads. To Ruskin mountain lakes seemed both to sleep and to dream. But their longest sleep, like that of Br'er Bear, is taken in the winter. Of this long sleep Mr. Muir says:[37]
"The highest (mountain lakes) are set in bleak, rough bowls, scantily fringed with brown and yellow sedges. Winter storms blow snow through the canyon in blinding drifts, and avalanches shoot from the heights. Then are these sparkling tarns filled and buried, leaving not a hint of their existence. In June and July they begin to blink and thaw out like sleepy eyes, the daisies bloom in turn and the most profoundly buried of them all is at length warmed and summered as if winter were only a dream."
[37] "The Mountains of California."
EVEN THE DUCKS OVERLOOK THESE LITTLE LAKES
But possibly these lakes are not asleep after all! They may be only playing possum; or hide and seek. There are mountain lakes that play hide and seek. That is to say, they hide and you seek; and often you don't find! They are so small that, surrounded as they are by trees, tall and thickly set, even the ducks pass them by. The glaciers that made them seem to have hidden them, as the robins did the babes in the wood. The glaciers did this, not by heaping leaves over them, but by piling up stones and soil around them. They are encircled by moraines, and on the moraines grow the trees that hide the lakelets even from the sharp eyes of the ducks.
A LITTLE GIRL'S PICTURE OF A FAMOUS SWISS LAKE