marsh + river

​A sweet family of four from Chapel Hill joined me for an early salt marsh excursion out of Oyster Landing. The day was calm and fair, neither cool nor warm, and the tide was high, just beginning to crest, as we cut across the oyster flats and beheld the cormorants flexing on the pilings. The marsh grass was greening at the shoots, pushing the old brown grass into the water, and you could see the filmy detritus on the surface. I reached down in the cold water and extracted an oyster to show them our keystone species, and we turned around with the tide, scaring off the birds on the old nature center dock, the cormorants taking labored flight, the pelican just chilling. Back at the landing, a bald eagle flew above us, and I extracted a baby stone crab from the water, too, before heading off to the river. 

The second of the day’s doubleheader proved doubly delightful as a family of four from downtown Philadelphia joined me on the river. The eighth-grader Lil wrote fantasy books and sung in the girls’ choir, and Shay had an adorable and toothy second-grade grin. Their parents were equally as cool, and we chatted in the way of old friend. We paddled upriver and took the Vaux Creek “lollipop” route and had enough time to jump onto the island for a quick peek at the old bricks and the Carolina bay and the longleaf pine forest. A swallowtail kite sublimely graced our presence on the big water back home, swooping in low and close to us, circling with its iconic tail and feeding on the wing. We saw no alligators nor any snakes, despite the day warming into what you could call heat, not to mention Shay’s curiosity in both species. A wind kicked up, but we had timed the tide as perfectly as possible, and we sprinted towards the finish after coming out from the “super-secret route.”