Earth Image Photography, Nature Photography, My Summer Office

8:50 a.m.-

Mourning doves are "Ooo'ing. "

The air is heavy with moisture today, trees are dripping, grasses bend low, a humid enclosure of womb-ish wet warm. Good rains the past two nights, the woods is refreshed and welcoming. Tuesday we came out mid-afternoon under a sky crisp and blue, temps in the high eighties. Past the office, under a bridge, upriver we went. Past a few homesteads and beyond Sandy Flats to a place far upstream: a wide curve in the river with grand sandy banks with a gravel bottom and swift deep current, intending to swim. EZ's right in, drinking it up and paddling hard staying still, while I stand submerged to the calf and sense that it's chill. I lecture myself with words like "you" and "wimp," then back all the way on shore to give things a think. EZ is watching her man stepping gingerly in bare feet, white legs and blue shorts. She sits nearby and gives off some snorts. It feels impish, her derision, but it incites a decision.

I stride to the water determined to show her, then launch into the deep with a glubbed screamy dive. I turn around back and paddle hard right, where EZ is prancing on shore and barking at this strange and rare sight. She's coaxed in by me and we stroke through the hard current, engaging the battle, me treading water, her doing the dog paddle. I sneeze and she hacks out water from the snout, both of us romp and cavort like school's just let out. Onto the bank we leave the comfy cool wet, and a quick EZ lesson how to shake off water I get. She gives me a look urging "do it like this," as she starts off real slow from her head to the tail. I try it myself on the bank in the sun, get badly dizzy and fall hard as a ton. EZ runs to my rescue and kisses me hard, full on the face, then barks in my ear. With a belch and a leap she runs down the shore, then up the high bank like she's off to the store. Into the water I step to wash off the sand, complaining I scrub, 'cuz she won't give me a hand.

Back in the boat and upriver we meander, two friends in the day.