sandy island

A family from  eastern NC called to see if they could hop on the Sandy Island tour, and I decided to go for it--even though it was a last-hour booking--and once again, I was super glad I did because they were awesome. A sturgeon jumped in sunlight right when we got on the river,  and the flooding tide scooted us right along upriver. We saw a big brown water snake in the crook of a cypress tree, wrapped around a knee. Herons in the rookery. Ospreys on the wing. Baby gators in the back creeks. On the island, we saw turkey tracks on the road and redheaded woodpeckers flying from pine to pine. The yellow pitcher plants leaned over, their tubes filled with rain. One velvet ant crawled across the soft sand of the road. Andrew, who works in historical construction and renovation, assessed the bricks in the rubble pile and concluded they were modern. He could see an oil sheen on the bricks, and the mortar was a clue, too. Back in the kayaks, a light rain cooled us off, and we crossed the river after the canal and returned on river left. We caught a current by the shoreline, and a little tailwind, and I noticed another rookery I'd never seen before, the herons just as cranky. This ancient river never gets old.