Ten Minutes

It doesn't take ten minutes for me to lose count of the number of yellow crowned night heron sightings.  I guess that they really like this inside corner where the long sand bar meets something more firm.  Egrets, night herons, osprey, a glossy ibis and more egrets, that's what it is.

I spent my morning working in an enormous cave of a mostly abandoned building preparing for a fall art event.  Scraping walls, spraying, scraping flooring up...that's what it is.  I like hard work and I like making things, but I don't so much like fixing stuff that is broken because of neglect.  But, like a long day paddling, you just put your head down and go.

It takes surprisingly little time for my head to return to where it should be...nothing more to disturb the rhythm of paddling other than a stiff breeze, nothing to take my eyes astray other than the flushing of yet another heron.  A great egret flies across the bow and I notice that it looks like one of the day's clouds.  It turns into the wind and settles most gracefully on the branches of a dead fall tree that lies a bit back in the spartina.  That's what it is.

Wheeler Marsh, Housatonic River