The Edge of Winter

It is a gray day, but a calm gray day.  I set out downriver with the low tide an hour past.  The flood current is insignificant.  I pass a Great Blue Heron, push a small flock of Mallards along, and see six Common Loons.  The Loons are all well out in mid channel and well spaced out, but at canoe eye level, the silhouette is unmistakable.

Nell's Channel

I enter the marsh at Nell's Channel, the only open way in at low tide.  The built world disappears for most of that distance behind the salt marsh horizon - three feet of mud bank topped with three feet of golden cord grass.  A pair of Harriers fly by with one trailing the other by about a hundred yards.  I wonder if it is a hunting tactic - the second bird arriving just as prey thinks it is safe to move.  I pass by three Dunlin feeding on exposed silt and at the end of the channel is a lone Gadwall.

Dunlin

Gadwall

At the bottom of  Nell's Channel, I turn into the marsh.  The water has come up just enough to make passage although I run myself into a large dead end.  I'm a bit surprised about that as I know this end of the marsh well and it just isn't that difficult to find the route.  Another Harrier comes by, this time much closer, but still too quick for a photograph.

It has been cloudy and gray up to this point.  Then, one of the best two minutes of canoeing arrives.  The low winter sun burns through the clouds, in a second the night chilled marsh becomes warm and the cord grass begins to glow.  There's nothing I can do but set my paddle down and watch.