Haze

It rained often during the night and it seems to have rained often during the night over most of the area.  But, it is warm and the soaked landscape brings a quiet to the air, a quiet that only becomes more perfect when the sprinkle of raindrops, near and far, mingle into a curtain that excludes the man made sounds that permeate nature.  Just as I set out, it begins to sprinkle.

The town grocery opened at eight but I knew that if I waited that half hour to buy the snack that I should have taken along, I would miss something important.  So, I continued to the put-in hoping that I still had an old mangled granola bar somewhere in the bowels of my pack.  I did not.

A low thin haze hangs over the river, a haze that cameras have a way of removing, but a haze non the less.  The tops of my eyeglasses fog, so no matter how clear the day becomes, I will paddle in a haze.  I am hungry, but only in the stomach.

I flush a great blue heron here and there.  I scare up a few wood ducks and get visited by a kingfisher every so often.  I see one hawk.  The osprey are all gone.

It is a symmetrical world.  With not a puff of wind, the forest and banks above the water are reflected below.  With not a hint of breeze, I paddle as often on the left as on the right, no corrections for wind.  I plan on three hours up river.  Just about then I see a party of canoes coming down and I turn, preferring to not pass and then repass them, keeping the river in front of me to myself.

Two fast canoes slowly catch up and pass me, gaining a few inches with each stroke.  They go out of sight in a half hour, not far ahead, but always around the bend.  I pass them when they stop to rest, and see them no more.