Eagle Day

I check my watch.  It has been seven minutes since I left shore.  I have seen four bald eagles - two immatures nearby and up at the mouth of Hamburg cove, two adults.  I cross over to the island out in the middle of the river off of the cove.  The raspy whistle calls of the eagles come out of the forest behind me. 

The fifth eagle

I have no reason to be here today.  There is nothing that needs to be washed out of my "system" nor do I have some project to work on or some specific place to explore.  I have no reason to be here except that I want to be here.  In fact, only when I had stopped at a grocery on the way did I pull out my maps and decide where to start.  I will paddle until I find myself back where I started.

two great blue herons

I spot a fifth eagle on the broad and exposed sand bar on the upstream end of the island.  I spot a sixth about halfway between there and the bottom of the Selden Channel.

Great Egret

Schools of fish are tail slapping the water...so much so that it looks like a hail of stones striking the surface. (I will find out at the end of the trip that these are bunker probably being pursued by predator fish).

Part way up the Selden Channel I spot a low four-engined airplane well out away from my.  Even there, it is an easy identification, a B-17.  It flies overhead

I finish the Channel and cross the river and follow that shoreline down river.  I turn up a side channel that I've been in before but don't clearly remember.  After ten canoe lengths I am not sure I've been here.  After the first bend I know damned well that I've never been here.  I spot a seventh eagle, a mature.  I follow the creek in a short mile until it ends and there I recognize that I am near the center of the town of Deep River.  I am in the feature that the town is named for.

I head into the next channel that I come across when I continue down river.  This is Pratt Cove.  I leave some of it for a later trip, but it is a broad tidal freshwater marsh with a wide main channel.  It isn't particularly exciting today....I will return at other times of the year.

When I am taking out, a guy on a bike sneaks up behind me.  We exchange a few short sentences...or partial sentences.  Once my canoe is up on top of the car, we start talking...that goes on for an hour.  We have a surprising amount of stuff in common.