More Fun Surprises While Canoeing

The world is moving faster and faster in so many ways. Maybe I feel that way because I know that my time on this earth is closely limited. My activities will be reduced. My senses will not be as strong as they were. I am not bitter or angry about this. "It is what it is" to quote a famous dictator. 

My canoe trips will eventually be exchanged for car trips or shorter walks in the woods. Maybe I feel less worried about it all because my life has been filled with experiences and they have been repeated and repeated over seven decades. Thus time seems like a long series of expected changes that renew each day which is only a short 24 hours. 

With fall approaching and the early beautiful, cool weather we have been having here, I am hopeful for tree and leaf photos which I seem to collect with abundance every year. I must admit that the cycle of life, although often repeated, never gets old. 

Blessed with another beautiful day, we took a second canoe trip a few days after my prior post, this time to the higher part of the river which runs by our house. It is a long river and actually runs most of the length of the state. We had to load a canoe onto the top of the big car once again. It was a 25-minute drive and the only available restroom near our destination (the one at the gas station) was locked.  There was a portable potty used by the local fishermen at the canoe launch site. I used it because there was probably not going to be ANY area to get out of the canoe once we were on our way...high banks and mud beaches the whole way! I did not touch anything more than the door to the porta-potty and there WAS paper on the roll.  Then I got ready for about 4 hours of canoe paddling after not breathing inside the facility and later wiping my hands thoroughly with sanitizing wipes, and soon we were off in the quiet of the morning.

The fall flowers were in abundance and reminded me that native plants are so important to our environment as the connection for insects and animals. More important than the pretty exotics that everyone buys at the garden outlets and plants in their yards.

I saw a few bald eagles which surprised me because we were rather far up the river away from the more open water and the waters were brown and clouded by the recent rains. The eagles seemed healthy and full of food. 

Fall was just beginning to show her color as well, even though the day was warm.

Hubby is a "gunk-holer" which means no narrow side finger of water should go unexplored as we paddled up the main corridor even when fallen trees leave only a 2-foot passage into that tiny side finger of water. Most explorations brought us up shortly within a hundred feet or so to face a dead-end or a tangle of unpassable crossed trees. But persistent exploration does have its rewards and we did come across one lovely hidden pocket lake that must have had at least a dozen wood ducks cowering at the far side. I could not get pictures because they flew as soon as we got close enough for photos. My wish would be to be there early just before sunrise and see what wildlife hung out. 

In the photo above, we did make it around those fallen trees down another small exploration area!  Canoes are miraculously agile.

As we turned our canoe around to paddle back to the main river, I did get a few quick photos of this brown, round fellow in a tree.  He had seen us first and he checked us out before flying off to somewhere.  Flying so very silently.