Owning It

Put-in, 3 loons, 8 red-breasted mergansers, 5 long-tail ducks, Welch's Point, 13 buffleheads, 10 brants, Gulf Pond, 8 red-breasted mergansers, 30 buffleheads, 2 osprey, 2 great blue herons, 2 great egrets, 20 Canada geese, Indian River, great egret, plastic garbage can, shopping cart, milk crate, 6 Canada geese, 1 Canada goose on nest, bunch of red-wing blackbirds, 1 osprey.

A calm enough day, at least to start out.  The sound is old glass smooth - rippled but reflecting the colors of the sky, and birds can be seen quite far away.  Five clam boats work their dredges in their nearest allotted beds not too far out from shore.  In the quiet, the engines thrum at the low throttle setting used for dredging.

loons going dramatic

I see three loons before getting to Welch's Point, their colors becoming more dramatic as spring comes.  Just short of the point, five birds identify themselves with the now familiar call of the long-tailed duck.  They too are changing colors, although in the reverse of other waterfowl, they are brilliantly colored in winter and are going more drab at this time.  After the point, I find buffleheads and brants, about a dozen each.

long-tails going drab

The timing of the tide makes Indian River possible and I head that way, almost another two miles, half here in the sound and half in Gulf Pond.  The backed up flood tide squirts me through the gap created by the narrow railroad bridge and I stop to retrieve a plastic garbage can, filling it while I am at it.

I told my friend, P, that I had not found my artistic rhythm, yet, and that I was a bit surprised that it was taking more time and effort than I had thought it would.  Perhaps it was that I did not own my place of work, that I was just visiting.  Today, I remove a canoe load of plastic trash from the Indian River.  It is not much, yet, but now I own a piece of this place.  But, it is not ownership in the dry and often mean-spirited and spiritless legal sense, whose purpose is not much more than taxation, trespassing, and development.  That is a one-way ownership, an owning of commodity.  I begin to own the Indian River through a small act of stewardship.  And stewardship is not a one-way deal, not at all, because in this contract, the Indian River now owns a piece of me.  Perhaps, that is what has been missing.

First goose nest of the spring - in the phragmites of the Indian River