“Can you remember who you were before the world told you who you should be?”
Charles Bukowski
This is from last Friday. I made a trip to Loveland and stopped at Lake Loveland for a photo of the blue sky over the frozen lake. They were also doing some controlled burns west of town and you can see the smoke rising up in the foothills. Yesterday and today have been beautiful days but still on the coldish side for me. Please be careful at the Super Bowl parties and don’t over eat on chips and salsa or any other addictive foods that are spread out on the table. Enjoy your day!
I spent some time just looking out across the lake last night, watching this fisherman catch a couple of small mouth bass and I took in the scene. He says he comes here and fishes this area only, about a 50 foot stretch. If the fishings good his wife understands when he comes home at sunrise with a smile on his face.
I drove to Loveland to meet my sister for Sunday morning coffee and one of her special hugs. Sure needed the hug as my dashboard said it was 8 degrees. As I drove by Lake Loveland I was pleasantly surprised to see fog sitting above the lake. With the geese huddled up along the edge of the open water and the sun just coming up, I had to stop, take it all in and pull out my camera. This was not going to be a drive-by morning! Even though it was only 8 degrees I’m glad I stopped. And, when I got to the coffee shop my sisters hug was even more precious to me. Just after I got back in the car and started to drive away the geese lifted off. That would have been an awesome image. Next time.
When I was as a young boy, which was just a couple of years ago, my friends and I would ride our bicycles up the hill to this lake. We would carry our fishing rods across the handlebars with a couple of yellow jiggers, all in hopes of catching a few crappy. The lake is called Lake Loveland and has evolved from a muddy marsh, to a resource for irrigated agriculture, to a public water supply and a scenic and recreational treasure. It was completed in the fall of 1894 and filled for the first time with the spring runoff of 1895. Anyway, we would fish the south shore where the dam is lined with rocks and concrete slabs. Along the banks were large cottonwood trees with their trunks and roots providing habitat for these fish. Most of our fishing was for entertainment so catch and release was the order of the day, hoping we would have the opportunity to catch them again. Of course over time some of those cottonwood trees are gone but the city has now made the South Shore into a nice park area with benches and statues. I made a visit last week, walked along the path on the dam and took in the view of those majestic Rocky Mountains. It reminded me of those boyhood days.
I stopped by Lake Loveland with this image in mind. I am standing at a boat launching dock and looking west towards the Rocky Mountains. The taller of the two peaks in the distance are Longs Peak in the park. I was raised just to the south of this image about six blocks. When I was a young kid we would ride our bikes up to the lake and fish for crappie. It’s difficult to see but there are ice fishermen out on the lake.
