Practicing my “J” stroke…blade deep in the directionless, murky water, the only sounds were distant calls of the eager day. I watched the swirls form beside me and disappear behind the canoe, like Orion fading from an autumn night…needlesly looking over my shoulder. Water droplets, resembling the sparkling eyes of my children, migrated and gathered…going nowhere, but inherently finding each other and security…motivated by gravity, a powerful influence unshakably established in all things.
The Heron remained off our bow, refusing to pass overhead, keeps a wary, attentive eye towards the approaching canoe. The redundancy of her unpleasant cry….the venom of the blackberry bush…does nothing to enhance her elegant flight. Nevertheless, she is equipped…hand-tailored…perfectly suited for this milieu. This is life. The delicate ebb and uncontrollable flow of things…The natural order of our surroundings…situations..emotional ecosystem…inward predator…and social prey.
I felt the canoe hit and jut alongside an indelible stump, submerged in the shallows…simply lifting my blade…letting the canoe go where she is forced. Resistance is unnecessary…certainly futile…Colossal sycamores demarcate separate worlds as they line the water…On the surface, she lives in one….but her existence not doubt depends on the unseen root structure that undoubtedly reaches into another. And my mind immediately races back to the stump…and the results of living in unbalanced worlds. A stalwart foothold in foreign soil…or trespassing unknowingly near a rising river..where we cannot live…the fine line separating adaptation…extinction.
Annabelle leaned into her paddle, gulping a blade-full of water…Her little shoulders tightened….flexed…as she powered forward. Routinely, she put her feet over the side, with paddle resting across her legs..simply watching the world pass. Baker trailed quietly in a separate boat as in maritime pursuit…cannons packed and smelling of powder. We had been sprayed repeatedly…unexpectedly. A trio of wood duck, beautifully marked, squeaked a departing shrill as they shot out of the grass with a velocity only allowed by a forward thinking creator…strangely incomparable to the lumbering heron.
At water’s edge, I pulled the canoe to shore….tilted on her side…kneeling beside the boat until the collected droplets could be returned to familiarity…back into the place for which they were meant to exist. Loosening the grip is difficult…allowing innate fluidity…respecting the natural order of all things.
