Sunday Morning Canoe Trip

At 7 a.m. Tom and I got into his truck and drove down to Great Moose Lake, which is about 5 miles away, on the other side of town. He'd loaded the canoe the night before, so all we did was make a thermos of coffee and pack up some leftover potato salad for a picnic breakfast.

We paddled into the marshy side of the lake, close to the entrance of Higgins Stream. The area is bayou-like, and nesting birds love it: we saw loons, black-headed ducks, red-winged blackbirds, and, just as we were about to pull into a sandy cove for breakfast, an eagle.

The eagle was hopping back and forth along the beach, like a parrot on patrol. Occasionally he stopped to snack on something unidentifiable or to stare at us in disgust. We did not see his mate, but I assume she was in a nest in one of the tall conifers behind him. We could have paddled in closer, but I was afraid. Even a crabby swallow can be alarming, let alone a crabby bird of prey with a giant hooked beak and sharp toenails and a six-foot wingspan.

So instead we had breakfast on a lovely little spit of high marsh, next to this elderly beer can.

Here is our view. Missing are the fifty or so red-winged blackbirds flitting back and forth among the grasses. Also missing are the croaking bullfrogs and the mink that Tom saw but I didn't.

Then I went home and baked bread and mowed grass and pruned a lilac bush and washed the car and made chocolate chip bars and made pizza and watched television and went to bed. It was a very non-literary day.