river

I plucked a swamp rose and passed the flower around—to both groups, a couple from Colorado, and a local family of four—because TIL (“Today I learned”) that swamp roses are as fragrant as any rose. So, from now on, we will stop to smell the roses on River Reader trips when they are in bloom. And as we did so, a gator swam past. Terror and beauty, I joked. 
 
This was another calm water, calm weather day with good people. What more, I often say, can you ask for? Well, a large Atlantic sturgeon leapt from the river, achieving a an aerial height of, I’d guess, four feet. 
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