The canoe takes me.

From the canoe ...
My country has gone insane. Religious and political ideology combined with greed and hateful speech. It's awful, it's maddening and I am ashamed and saddened.
In my canoe, the wind is behind me, coming over ten miles of lake under a low thick overcast. My canoe is completely sane. It is purposeful, even if I am not. It takes me. (the period drops in on that sentence of its own accord...) My canoe drifts, it rocks on waves, if floats, it carries load, but mostly, it takes me, and, I let it.
The big lake, all rock walled and with two long floating bridges turns ordinary wind waves into chop. I stay a couple hundred yards from shore, as I move north, for easier paddling. I am on my knees until I reach Union Bay, the boat is more stable in that position. But no waves come over the gunwales and the only real thrill is when a yacht sends a large wake my way. It adds with the wind waves and I ride a couple chest high waves. Along the south shore of Union Bay the air smells green, the wind blowing it across the east marsh. It is the smell of fresh cut grass, only cleaner and more natural to the taste. It has many more flavors than a lawn. Three pied billed grebes are to my left. Their talent is to sink, not dive, without trace into the water, and they demonstrate for me as usual. I stop at the big beaver lodge, which is covered in summer vegetation so that no casual visitor would recognize it. The lake is down 15 inches or so from early summer. Of notice, cormorants have begun to return. They seem to be the first birds of the returning fall. I circle the bay, pass through the cut, the next bay, and down Lake Union, just going where my canoe takes me.