Smoke and Rain... and Bowling Dwarfs

Too restless to let a day go to waste, I put in from O' Sullivans Island.  It is, again, smokey.  For real, it is nearly twilight. Less brown than the previous days, I suspect that the murk is smoke and water particles, as it is humid as heck.  But, as happened on previous days, the murk is so thick that the temperature is cooler than one would expect.  There are a good number of people fishing from the banks.  Although the river is greatly improved over its industrial low point, I would never eat anything caught here.

I head downstream.  The tide is past low, but this far upriver, I won't notice the reverse flow, unless I want to really focus and pick at gnats. 

It is calm with an occasional light upstream blow that doesn't amount to anything.  I spot several Osprey, a few Great Blue Herons, an Egret and a couple Kingfishers.  It's as if most of the birds are grounde due to bad visibility.

I turn back at Wooster Island, the island that I can never remember the name of.  I usually remember it as Crescent Island, as it is crescent shaped.  Of course there is no Crescent Island in this area.  

I start hearing thunder when I make my turn.  It is quite distant, somewhere south and east of my location. It is rolling thunder.  I grew up in the upper midwest and mom would tell us the Dutch colonial folktales about thunder being the sound of dwarfs bowling in the sky.  This never made too much sense to me, even as a kid, because midwest thunder is a great booming explosion coming from a point source.  But, in New England, thunder usually travels across the sky.  Today it is starting southeast of me and rumbling west. The stereo effect is quite remarkable.  It is not at all difficult to imagine a damaged bowling ball rolling down a lumpy bowling lane.  Anyway, it is, so far, well south of me, and we have dwarfs in the clouds.

It starts sprinkling as I paddle back.  The wind comes up - a nice steady tailwind. The thunder continues for about a half hour, mostly traveling east-west well behind me. The sprinkle becomes a steady rain during the last mile, but it is warm enough that bothering to stop to don raingear would be pointless.  The fishermen have all run away by the time I take out.