Getting Small

It is calm and sunny at the put-in, the light still low in the autumn morning, the cattails and phragmites as golden as they will ever be, and the bare hardwood trees as grey as they will ever be.  A very high tide has just peaked a half hour back and already a stiff current builds in the constricted spots.  But that high tide also means that there will be no shallows, the water will be deep right to the cattails, right to the rocky banks.  I get close up views of the forested edges and I can visit inlets that I normally bypass.  I glide over boulders and submerged ridges that I normally have to skirt knowing they are there, but never seeing them.

coffee break

The wintering birds are around, but in the lesser numbers that cold weather brings.  In the big bay by Goose Island, I spot just a half dozen buffleheads and two swans.  In the channel leading upstream out of that bay, I come across a family of swans - two adults and two cygnets still with the last of their grey feathers.

But, it is the scenery that stops all. It is nothing short of glorious...a word I do not toss about with ease... it's really not in my vocabulary.  If I was less an explorer I would probably sit and fill my camera with images.

It has been awhile since I was in the canoe with both work and weather keeping me aground.  And, as usual when such things have happened, it takes an hour or two for me to drop in on where I should be.  Somewhere deeper in the marsh I begin to shrink from my civilized self, I become small just as I should be in the presence of nature, and I become at peace with "it".  I go on my way.

Lord's Cove, Connecticut River