Perspective

I woke up last night, something bothering me, something on my mind.  The cat came in and jumped up on the bench that is next to my side of the bed and purred for a good long time.  I went back to sleep.

I put in at low tide motivated by the need to put things into perspective.  Whatever anyone thinks about canoeing, if they think about it at all, canoeing puts things back in order. 
I waded the first 150 yards, lifted once over a gravel bar, and then found enough water to float.  At Pocket Knife Bend I came across four Great Blue Herons, two Great Egrets, two Snowy Egrets and two Green Herons.  Then I flushed an Osprey from somewhere in a tree above... a good start.  I continue on pushing against a minor flood current.

I've been working art gigs for the last three years, something that ended, as far as I can figure, due to my ridiculous nature of paying attention to safety and efficiency.  So be it, but burn the joint down on your own...I'll have no part of that.  Now, I work with a lot of people who are good, but perhaps less well off and less traveled.  My problems are luxury problems to whatever most of them might have to deal with.  I have been raised well and I most definitely married well.  Due to such matters, I have had an adventurous and somewhat worldly life, if that can be measured in exposure and experiences.  I am, in my new work circle, an odd duck.  But, in my artist network I am anything but odd.

The tide is just high enough for me to pass through the Sneak, when I get to that place.  I collect a good amount of spartina alternaflora seed on my arms as I brush against the crowding grass. 

I pass a couple kayaks when I exit Bailey Creek and join the Neck River, but they talk too bright and cheerfully for me, and I move on thinking that they were somewhat irreverent, although nice enough.

I turn the confluence and catch an easy fast flooding tidal current up the East River.  The metaphor does not escape me.  As I paddle I think of the past, standing on the edge of great crevasses, hanging a 1000 ft up a granite wall, walking through great U-shaped valleys in a distant place above the tree line.  Perspective has returned.

East River