Earth Image Photography, Nature Photography, My Summer Office

6:45 p.m.-

EZ's asleep. The sun is ready to sink beneath the tree line in the west. Dragonflies are darting, hovering. One at six inches is scrutinizing EZ's twitching muzzle up front. Crickets are purring, insects are keening. A few rare trees are changing themselves into red and orange melodramas, ambitious sorts who are starting September's show early. The water level is back up where it's accustomed to being, as though the guy who raises and lowers the dam gates got caught by his boss for playing a joke on us down here.

A mink I should think, all black and sleek peeked over a clump of sand, shiny from wet or shiny from its prized fur coat I couldn't tell because I don't know. Standing in an inch of water by a lair in a sandstone cliff, it lolled its head at our approach, as cats do when put upon by strange visitors. It had a face like a monkey--though it still was all mink. I drifted closer, mink lifted one paw, as football centers do just before hiking the ball, lowered and turned and loped along sand, leaped to a angled tree root, onto the lip of the cliff and was gone.