My favorite lake

There are a dozen lakes in Golden Gate Park, each with a special charm. But if I was pressed to name a favorite, it would be Metson Lake, which I walk around at least once a day. It has the peaceful simplicity of a watercolor; it’s the Platonic ideal of a meadow lake: A circle of blue-green framed by tall cypresses and arching willows, and clumps of cattails, calla lilies and purple and yellow irises and a grassy dell perfect for loafing with a book or picnicking. Water tumbles in from a small waterfall on its eastern edge – a rock jumble built for kids to play. On windless days, the lake reflects the trees and sky like a mirror.

I wasn’t surprised to learn recently that it was also John McLaren’s favorite. He built it in 1908 as a reservoir for water pumped by Murphy Windmill, which was constructed at the same time. It cost less than $10,000. Following the practice of the day, it was named for the president of the Park Commission, William H. Metson, a mining lawyer.

(Incidentally, not all commissioners were so pleased to have park sites named for them. William Alvord wanted the lake that bears his name to be called “The Lakelet.” Fellow commissioners complied with his wishes and then renamed it after him while he was out of town. He was so angry he resigned — which apparently was exactly what his rivals on the board had hoped he would do. They replaced him with Leland Stanford, clearing the way for the Ocean Park and Railroad to build its railroad through the park. Ah, nasty politics in this town go a long ways back.) A world of such machinations seems distant when I’m at Metson Lake.

Because it sits alongside a stretch of Middle Drive West that’s closed to cars, the lake is wrapped in a quiet that allows me to tune into its rich life:

In the mornings, it’s awash in birdsong. My handy Merlin app tells me the singers: robins, house finches, song sparrows, towhees, chestnut backed chickadees. I don’t need help identifying the screeching crows or the operatic redwing blackbirds that like to perch on the cattails. In the late afternoons when the sun has burnt off the fog, I‘ll hear the plop of a fish jumping up to catch a fly. I’ll see the backside of a cormorant raking the shallow depths for food. A gang of geese graze the grass by the road every afternoon, hissing at my dog when we pass by.

A massive cypress toppled into the water three years ago and has been left there, a woody reef that draws wildlife. Ducks and geese and turtles like to sunbathe on it. This spring, I keep seeing the same trio of ducks gliding around. I wonder if they’re a duck throuple. (Yes, it’s sometimes a thing.)

Hummingbirds puck fluff from cattails and then speed off into the cypresses where I guess they have their nests. Tiny minnows flick through the shallows around the vegetation. The water occasionally moves with a mysterious current. It wasn’t until I saw a muscular fin poking above the surface that I realized the water was being stirred by one of the fat carp that lives there. I once came across two boys with a fishing pole and bag of bread hoping to catch one of them. While fishing isn’t allowed in the park, I couldn’t help but admire their Huckleberry Finn spirit.

My routine has made the lake familiar and that may also be why I love it. I like that I know in the mornings I’m likely to see the guy who sits on a bench with his three small yapping dogs and a thermos of something hot and who never says hi when we pass.

Crazy factoid: in 1988 then-parks superintendent Barney Barron proposed turning the lake into a year-round skating rink. With a depth of just three feet, he figured Metson or near-by Elk Glen Lake, would the easiest to freeze. He said he was inspired by seeing the wintertime “Currier and Ives-like skating scenes” in New York’s Rockefeller Center and Central Park, as The Examiner put it. A rink could draw some 200,000 people into the park, he speculated. Thankfully, the idea never went anywhere.

But maybe Mother Nature was listening. In December, 1990, a rare Arctic blast froze the top few inches of the lake. On Christmas Day, the Godfather of Skate, David Miles Jr. strapped on ice skates and played hockey there. ”It was absolutely fabulous,” he later told The Examiner. “Not many people can say they’ve ever ice skated in the park.”

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And in other lake news: it’s Great Blue Heron nesting season again at Blue Heron Lake. There are currently at least 15 chicks in nests at two sites on the lake — one by the boathouse, the other by the waterfall, according to San Francisco Nature Education. Volunteers from the group will be out on May 16th with spotting scopes to help you see them. It’s free and so much fun to see the heron babies. Learn more here.