This is what Sundays are for.
We used to do this all the time when the girls were home.
They’ll be jealous.
Something to Show for It
Lovely T
Her website and occassional blog is here:
I know a lot of guys who have wooden boats or Melonseeds, or both, and have artists for wives. Must have something to do with placing such a high value on aesthetics, even above more practical things. I can think of seven off the top of my head without even trying hard, guys that I know personally. Definitely a pattern to it.
Potomac River Float Trip
Emily in her kayak
One nice thing about a big loop in a river… It doesn’t take much driving to set up the shuttle to float it. Saves a lot of time.
On Sunday, we left Emily’s car at the ramp at Four Locks, then loaded up the boats and headed over to McCoy’s Ferry. It’s a short trip, but we passed through tunnels under two canal aqueducts and a really high train trestle to get there. The ramp at McCoy’s Ferry isn’t in great shape, but we got loaded and launched without too much trouble.
C&O Canal
The Weber House ~ Four Locks, Maryland
Here are a couple of odd facts:
- The longest National Park in the lower 48 states is right here, on the border of Virginia, Maryland and West Virginia.
- The narrowest National Park is here, too. It’s the same one.
The Chesapeake & Ohio Canal National Park is 185 miles long, but averages only 175 yards wide. Strange combination.
Lunch Stop: Wolftown
Wolftown Mercantile ~ Wolftown, Virginia
I live and work in a rural area. The views are awesome.
Lunch can be an adventure all its own.
Capsize No. 1
Bill watching the clouds build
I alluded to this story back in the summer, but was so busy then I couldn’t take time to tell it. Roger Rodibaugh recently reminded me that he and a few other folks have been waiting quite patiently to hear it. Actually, several adventures from last summer slipped by unaccounted for that I should revisit. Now, with it cold and snowy outside, seems a good time to get back to them.
Annotated Bibliography
We wake, if we ever wake at all, to mystery, rumors of death, beauty, violence . . .
— Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
This is the hard time. Days grow longer, true, but the light is frail.
Puddles, skinned in ice, press last year’s leaves under glass, and mud.
In the field, I mistake a deer hide, jumbled in the grass, for a dirty wet flannel shirt. It still looks fresh, the blood still red, from a November kill.
Shadows of things are white with frost, instead of black, inverted. They shy from the sun, scooting around shrubs and cedars, like Winter’s children behind their mother’s skirt.
Steam burns off the fence rails when the sun comes up. Everything is on fire. By afternoon, though, the flame sputters and goes out. Months yet to go before spring.