Earth Image Photography, Nature Photography, My Summer Office

7:12 a.m.-

Silent surges are roiling the river, as they did all night long and last week and decades ago when men with warts and men without work begged bread in 1932. Sunshine is sliding down into the green field to the south where black bugs are warming. Mist lifting from the river in wisps has no purpose but aesthetic amusement.

The dew on my chair has no reason and didn't think as it settled there dark and secret during the night, now wetting my butt.

I released EZ from the tent and she ran to the river to see if it needed her attention. I sat facing the sun, without coffee, and watched. Stalks of grass along the bank streamed invisible tendrils of spider web trails, then exploded with sight as they reflected sun streams and undulated out on the air. Memories of televised tracer fire during nocturnal military confrontations. An inhumane portrayal, but an apt description, cannon barrels softly waving in the sun, sudden explosive light streaking out and disappearing into familial unknowns. Sometimes a tether illuminates completely all at once, wiggling and wavering a gold line of fun, birds singing all the while.

It means nothing in the long scheme of everything. But for this moment it is everything. Danderous scandalous coworkers get put in their place, moss growing where it shouldn't on the roof of the house isn't so bad after all, and what a terrorist might do to obliterate the whole wide world means nothing, when fear of being lost is set free by the bigger picture of eternity somewhere else without them.
7:18-

A sunlit shallow reflects EZ's movement above butterscotch sand. She's not worried about what might happen either. All around the boat, and in every space of beach under the water or on shore her paw prints dimple the sand. A water spider casts a caricature shadow of itself three inches below, like it's strapped pontoon floats to its toes.

7:21-

Clamshells. That's what EZ likes. White, mother-of-pearl insides face-up in the sun.

10:45-

There is no sign of satisfaction on board. A senseless man and a silent wax wife sit on Naugahyde plastic seats under a hunter green cotton canopy staring straight forward without expression across acres of lovely summer scenery, surging away fast in a spraying pontoon.

There was no nuance of fun from them when EZ and I neared the boat landing and saw the big boat unloading from a Cadillac hitch, tipped up at an acute steep angle, half in the water, mannequin woman sitting mum at the round cocktail table, arms stretched straight ahead, face staring at blue sky. The pontoon floated off its skids. Man roped it to the dock, aiming out, then drove off to park. Wax woman dropped her arms and hung them straight down from her shoulders. Man trudged back to the dock and got onto the boat. He sat down in the cockpit and lit the ignition on his ninety-horsepower motor. It snorted out a deafening roar because the prop was resting on concrete, not in the water. Having learned that power, and more of it, is the quickest fix to affliction, the man shoved down on the throttle and spun up a wide spray of river over the ramp. Ducks paddled away shouting. Ascetic man abated the gas, then shoved it harder. Small fish and a nine-pound carp cart-wheeled ten feet high, thudded onto the pier and around the gravel lot like hailstones with motorized tails.

Cursory man shut off his power. Wax woman, who'd learned servility well, kept her hands hanging down near the floor and blind eyes unfocused. Husband picked out a gaffe from an arsenal of boating tools, stood, and carried it to the front deck, where he stabbed it into the river, nudging his float away from the dock. He returned to his seat and re-ignited his power, cautiously slipped it into forward and glided into the lily pad garden northwest of where he wanted to go. The propeller wove reeds and lily pad leaves and pulled down out of sight too many tender white flowers.

The boat bogged, as boats do when motor props are hindered with too much impediment. Man poured on the power and cracked the whip hard and the Evinrude's flanks glowed red and churned up a flower petal puree mixed with shredded green sprouts and frog leg filets and serrated pun' kin seed hearts.

The man broke his diocese free out into the unhindered channel. He gripped the wheel, she placed her hands on her lap, and together they raced toward tranquility on the water.