On a recent warm summer evening, before beginning our nightly ritual of hand watering our gardens, into our little artCentral-green car we loaded—my husband David and me and our two puppies, Chiquita and Lasyrenn. Making a quick curbside dinner pick up at The Carthage Deli on the Square, we headed east beneath amazing banks of billowing clouds that seemed to grow more beautiful beyond every curve in the road.
Arriving at our destination—a favorite place to relax and unwind and where a portion of the original Route 66 pavement runs along Spring River—we circled Kellogg Lake twice looking for the perfect location to spread our rug and picnic on the grass with a view of the water.
As we made our first go-around, in front of the lakeside stone pavilion a very large flock of Canadian geese completely blocked our passage. We waited patiently amused as we watched them decide to slowly go waddling and flip-flopping their way up the steep embankment and out of our path while sporting their gleaming white face masks like chin straps. When just a few stragglers hung behind and voiced indecision about joining the others, the entire consortium turned around and blithely ambled back over the road in the other direction. Our dinner appetites ripening, we waited some more.
On our second go-around, passing the boat ramp we saw quite a few folks comfortable in assorted lawn chairs. Quietly bantering back and forth, surrounded by coolers and tackle boxes, they sat with fishing poles at the ready to make their evening catches.
One large family had come to unload for an evening excursion over the lake’s calm surface. Their flatbed truck filled with sleek crafts looked like a colorful bouquet of pointed flowers. With paddles like leaves sticking out here and there in every direction, one by one they launched and began quietly slicing the water—a family flotilla of kayaks—mother and father and an assortment of boys in varying sizes, each and every one wearing life vests and baseball caps.
Finally we settled in the peaceful quiet beneath shade trees on the far shore away from the activity of anglers and paddlers. Sharing our sandwich and chips and cool cucumber water we watched the graceful fountain spraying misty plumes high and wide not far from the markers commemorating Charles A. (Lex) Kellogg and Mary E. Kellogg who donated the land for the lake and E. M. “Uke” Haughawout who contributed foresight, planning and direction for Kellogg Lake’s creation in the mid 1950’s.
Seeming to arrive out of nowhere, thoroughly enjoying the splashing and laughing of horseplay, boy members of the family flotilla chopped their way into the placid waters just before us, calling up images of other hatted paddlers moving a bit more languidly through the waters of the Yerres river across the ocean in France.
French boaters like those pictured in Périssoires sur l’Yerres (Boating on the Yerres) were a favorite subject of the realist and impressionist Gustave Caillebotte. As described online: “The three boats—sporty, kayak-like craft—glide on a stream that opens in a wedge shape. The tilt of the riverbank exaggerates the downhill flow of the water. The geometry of the painting, a rough wedge expanding from the top right to the lower left, promotes the sense of downward, leftward flow. The lead boat cuts an arrowhead of light into the shadow cast by the large tree.” This painting is one of the earliest and largest of the seven boating scenes that Caillebotte completed between 1877 and 1878 at his family’s estate along the Yerres River.
Perhaps you will be inspired to don a summer hat and take a spin around Kellogg Lake where you can enjoy the dancing fountain, boat, picnic, fish, hike, play Frisbee, cloud and bird watch and conjure images of other flotillas out for summer pleasures while enjoying the gifts of Mother Nature’s waters.
For a summery outing right in town be sure to visit the JASON SHELFER | SCULPTURAL SPECTACULAR— the free drive-through exhibition now on view at artCentral, 1110 East Thirteenth Street in Carthage.
