Someplace

It is quite calm, so much so that I can spot shed feathers on the top of the water from a couple hundred feet away.  As I cross the mouth of the bay from Portage Point to Wilson's Point, two kayakers pass by just far enough away that a greeting would be a disturbance rather than a pleasantry.  So, we all stay silent.  They cut a route straight across the widest part of the bay, deliberate and purposeful as if they are en route to someplace.  I paddle the shorelines, the edges of the landscape where most things are and most things happen, and I watch for something, anything, different.  It seems as if I, too, am en route to someplace.  But, unlike the kayakers I don't know where my someplace will be.  I may even paddle right past my someplace without recognizing it.  It may just be that my someplace is always someplace ahead of me.  I find this uncertainty comforting.

Near the West Lodge, I stop to check the mud for tracks.  I find beaver, raccoon, duck and some small mammal with sharp little claws.  By the Workbench Lodge my ear catches a bird call that isn't quite in my memory.  I paddle on, but catching a glimpse of it through the brush, I double back.  A pileated woodpecker comes bobbing up in its stubby winged flight pattern from a dead birch.  It is where I do not expect to see it.