Now here is why a fella buys a couple of kayaks!  Walker and I took a paddle on the Wapsipnicon River this morning, from Olin to Hale.  This led to a number of puns, but since Robyn helped me drop the car off, Walker was able to call to her "I'll see you in Hale!"

Kind of makes your day.

This is a nice little stretch of river, 6.7 miles long, with a nice current and clearing water.  The sandbars are nicely scoured by last week's high water, and Walker was totally pleased with our adventure.  He doesn't fancy lakes much.  There is no current and it's boring.  You paddle around and there's no suspense.  But a river, now, that's something different!  There's always something new around the bend.

We stopped on this sandbar and I got the camera out, of course.  I had it in the big kayak's dry compartment.  Good thing, too, because I almost ditched the little boat getting into it.  235 pounds in a 12 foot kayak takes some doing.  Once I'm in I'm almost sprightly!  Walker and I dumped the water out of my boat on the first of many sandbars and we carried on.  The sun was shining, the water was burbling, and the birds were singing.

What one sees here are heron tracks.   I should have put my toe in the picture so you could appreciate that they are 5 inches long.  Herons have big dogs.

I was telling Walker that when I was a boy, I used to go down to the Arkansas River and hang out on a sandbar.  The Arkansas (pronounced Ar-KAN-sas in Kansas and normally everywhere else) is a bendy river that meanders across Kansas from sandbar to sandbar.  It provided me with a place to go when I needed to be by myself.  There was a grassy bank up 20 feet from the sand, overhung with young elm trees, and I used to sit there and watch the water go by, and not think any more than I could help.

I have always loved to walk along the water's edge and see what the river left.  I like the texture of it.  The river leaves behind gradated lines of matter of various particular weights.  There's an order to it.  I think this one will make a great desktop wallpaper.

Of course, there were flowers, and I photographed them.   I am nothing if not consistent in this.  Robyn rolls her eyes.  I feast mine.

Time on the river calms my soul.  Walker and I spent time and didn't argue.  We needed some of that time together.  

Fourteen year old boys make better sense if you get them alone and give them a space to romp in.  Romping helps a young man channel his testosterone back into nature, vigor, joy, and motion.

Yep, this is why we buy kayaks.

 And cameras. 

Down by the river I used to find refuge from problems I did not make and could not control, from the decay and disappointment that seemed to follow our family like a stray dog.  

I was able to sit on the bank and wash away 7th grade gym, unrequited love that isn't love yet, but longing.

The water will tell you, if you listen, how you will make it through, another day, another week, the rest of your life.  

You will keep going, and if you look around. . . .

There are flowers.