Earth Image Photography, Nature Photography, My Summer Office

12:40 p.m.-

Dim, grismal time.

The sunny mid-fifties is nowhere in sight despite the Weather Channel's promise. After a month of abnormal cold and a couple of snows--one of six inches I refused to shove from the driveway--a warming trend started on Wednesday and Weather Channel personalities performed jolly jigs on top of their desks so happy for us abused northerners. A rare Saturday off of work coincided with the warm (relative) treat moving our way from the gulf. It was forty-three degrees when we left home forty-five minutes ago and EZ, who always has her coat on and is ready to go, watched me drop the boat onto the hitch, dove into her spot in the back of the car, and resumed her melodious whine-mixed-with-bark, remembered from last spring's early releases.

The water is black, except where reflections of gray sky and dead brown grasses chuckle around tree stumps and deadwood clumps. It's a different place. Wide open views through leafless gray trees. The beaver has been working; refuse of gnawed limbs is collected against the narrow entrance and resisted our passage with spring-like bowed branches. It's silent, free of bird sounds. And insects, though a small spider is tiptoeing across the arch of my shoe in a bewildered hesitant gait.