After so many, many days of rain: this sky and this water. 

Brownfield Bog is just over an hour west of Portland, but even on a perfect day it is extremely quiet. The site not easy to access if you've got a car likely to bottom out on untended gravel roads; and though it's a state-managed wilderness area, it has no boat launch, no bathroom, no amenities or entertainments beyond itself. Yesterday we saw a couple of birders walking along the shore, a couple of kayakers out in the open water. For the bog, that's a crowd. Often we see no one at all.

What we do see, every time we go, is extraordinary animal life. We paddled down one of the marshy inlets and found a most magnificent beaver dam. Along the shore we saw an oriole, a veery. Geese couples gave us side-eye. A heron flew up from the grass. Swallows harassed a red-tailed hawk.

And we saw our first ever sandhill crane--a huge, red-headed bog stalker, with a wingspan of up to seven feet. I thought I might faint with happiness.

The day was so, so lovely. And to be outside, on the water, in the sunshine and the breeze . . . to be floating with Tom in the midst of such bustle and ripple--  Sometimes the world is very kind.