STANDING ON A CHUNK of stone across the lake from Mecca Township, Ohio, my 7-year-old son leaned over to scoop up a large fluttering tan moth from the water’s surface. The insect beat its wings furiously, slowly moving toward shore.

But seeing the boy, or sensing his presence, the insect reversed direction, heading back out. This, I said, was a mistake. Needless to say, with the subtlest of smacking sounds, the moth was gone.

My son described the green-gold fish, with wide black vertical stripes, that swallowed the moth.

“It was a lake perch,” said my father-in-law, John, standing alongside. He would know. For 70 years, John had fished in and around Mosquito Creek Lake State Park, where we camped in late June with my in-laws. This was my chance to learn about their “place,” the fields and forests of northeastern Ohio.

The one-hour drive to the park took us through the back roads of Amish country around the town of Middlefield. At one point, we passed a strawberry field filled with bonneted women and girls, and boys in suspenders and straw hats.

Between level fields of winter wheat or hay, we passed meadows, wetlands, second-growth hardwoods and the occasional town with a blinking stoplight.

John was the grandson of Hungarian immigrants who came to Ohio in the early 20th Century, finding work in and around the steel mills of Youngstown.

His mother’s parents lived in rural Greene, Ohio, at the northern tip of the state park, while other relatives moved nearby to what is now its eastern border. There, for many years folks gathered on the rich loamy land for parties, highlighted by the traditional Hungarian bacon fry.

The lake took shape as part of a flood-control project, created through eminent domain, and completed in 1944. Before then, John swam with his cousins in Mosquito Creek. They drank the clear water and dodged black snakes zigzagging by. The creek bottom was lush with freshwater mussels, reflecting its excellent water quality.

Our campsite was under a grove of swamp white oaks right on the lake. Among the nesting birds overhead were a blue-gray gnatcatcher and yellow-throated vireo. Waterfowl breeding in adjacent wetlands included great blue heron, green heron and great egret, which emitted a spine-tingling screech when it crossed the lake.

At sunset, a bullfrog would begin a forceful, direly intense grunting until dawn. During our stay, the weather was abnormally cold. On a rainy day, for example, the temperature reached 53 degrees at noon.

One evening, a blonde woman in jeans and a white-hooded sweatshirt played “Danny Boy” on bagpipes, as she strolled through the woods. At another point, we watched a resplendent male wood duck feed close to shore on popcorn that had blown into the lake.

Pickup trucks pulling campers, dubbed Kodiak, Sierra and Viking, carried locals from Warren, Youngstown and nearby cities, who planted American flags in the dark soil of their campsites.

Of all these images, the moth was most striking. Maybe a difference between humans and other animals was that we recognized a helping hand.

For example, John and I accepted each other as relatives long ago, a leap of faith for both of us, and over the years I learned a great deal from him about how a father loved his family, help that was there when I needed it the most.

According to the Web site, Wiktionary, Mecca may mean, “Any place considered to be a very important place to visit by people with a particular interest.”

For several days last month, Mosquito Creek Lake State Park was Mecca.

Scott Turner is a Providence-based nature writer. His columns appear here each Saturday ( scottturnerster@gmail.com).