I have fallen in the eyes of my hero.
I have lost that special bond that only siblings have.
Oh how can I climb back upon my sisterly pedestal?
As old as I am and as old as you are, how could I have possibly forgotten YOUR birthday???
Hmmm, guess I’ll have to invest in the Post It Notes stock cuz I’ll be usin’ them a lot now. It’s so hard to get older, you know? I haz no excuses and not even a damn good reason. But, on the other hand, this event WILL bring you a renewed sense of how lofty a position BIG BROTHERS carry. It will now be upon your shoulders for YOU to NEVER forget. Hahahahaha!!!
All kidding aside, I DO want you to know how special you are to me and how much I really do cherish and hold dearly our relationship.
On another note, we took the kayaks out last week for the first time—as you said, you’ve had a lot of rain and we did, too. It was getting ridiculous; we had SNOW in the middle of May!
I am sending you some pictures of our day on Davis Lake.
The day was overcast but still quite warm and I told Kevin “Let’s just load up the boats and if we can’t get out on the water, well at least we tried”. Glad we did! That lake is 3 miles long and 3 miles wide and we probably paddled a total of 7 or more miles! We always are just ‘putzing’ when we start out, you know, enjoying the scenery right in front of us, enjoying the peace and quiet, living in all of the senses.
Standing on the opposite shore of our port of entry was a slim young man with long dark hair dressed in a grey Henley shirt and black pants, a black windbreaker tied around his waist. Alongside him was his black chow dog, pouncing into the grasses chasing who knows what. The young man had a handful of long, black feathers. He was raising them one at a time up into the air and then watching them fall gracefully to the ground. I didn’t speak to him, I didn’t interrupt his moment. What was he doing? I don’t know. What were his thoughts as we paddled by his space in time? I didn’t take a shot of this. Sometimes the memory makes it more ethereal.
The weather held for several more hours as Kevin and I investigated the shoreline; birds of all kinds and bugs and varmints. Some of the reeds had blossoms on their long, tall stalks. Sort of like orange blossoms.
We saw a point about three fourths of the way down towards the other end of the lake so we made that our point of reference. It turned out to be the only rock lined part of the shore, at least on that side. As we pulled up to rest, birds were flitting all about us. They were mostly blackbirds; redwing, yellow headed black birds (they sound like a penguin!) and something called a Western tanager. What a gorgeous little creature! Their red, orange, yellow and black plumage truly grabs your eye.
Kevin tried to snap a shot but they were so erratic he couldn’t. I put down my oars and simply floated quietly until the birds began to return to the rocks to get a drink of water. I had gotten my camera ready so all I had to do was point and shoot. I got them! Then they were gone.
Shortly after that we thought it best to return to the cars since the earlier mirror smooth appearance of the lake was quickly changing. The lakes tend to get a bit breezy in the early afternoons and with 3 miles to cross, I didn’t want to be stuck in the middle when the whitecaps began.
One tour book describes Davis Lake as “character building” if you are caught out there when the water is roiling. Let me tell you, it was character building just to paddle that far!
We made it and as we cruised up the opposite shoreline, we grabbed onto some tall reeds so we could take a rest without drifting away and losing ‘ground’. It seemed like it took forever to get across and our focus points kept changing. We finally made it up to the truck after our brief rest and with huge sighs of relief, we loaded up the kayaks to go find a place to park and have lunch. We brought hot chocolate (with marshmallows), hot dogs and buns and a little one burner camp stove. It was wonderful to enjoy that repast while we watched the whitecaps grow bigger out on the lake. “Wow…we made it just in time” we kept saying to each other. That hot dog tasted even better then…
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