The Sacred Place

 I set out from the town that once was called Pettipaug. The day was already unusually warm - more than 60F. There was more wind than the weather service had predicted, but it felt like it was a low wind. It felt as if the only moving air was in the lowest ten or twenty feet and that above that it might be calm. It was out of the west and by paddling the shoreline, the brush and reeds, which only reached six feet above the water, were enough to block the wind.

I needed time in my sacred place. A bit more than an hour upstream, I could return to the world.