SCENES
from THE
NORTHSHORE
Learning Patience
I heard the heron before I saw it. Two loud squawks broke the silence of the slough, announcing its approach before its shape ever cleared the treeline.
I was sitting low in my kayak when it came into view, rising up the dark water of a slough off the Tchefuncte River, just before dawn. The cypress-tupelo forest behind it held onto the night a little longer, dark and detailed enough to give the bird somewhere to stand out against. I panned with it as it came, and for a moment it seemed to hang there, suspended, as if floating on a string. It passed by effortlessly, unbothered by my presence, wings barely working against the still morning air.
Caught Between
We live most of our lives thinking we're standing on solid ground. Then something shifts, a diagnosis, a phone call, a decision made in half a second, and we find out we were always just suspended between one thing and the next. The ground was never as solid as it felt.
Reed and Refrain
In the early winter mist along Bayou Lacombe, a Red-winged Blackbird (Agelaius phoeniceus) sings from the reeds, its shoulders flashing scarlet in the low, warm sun. The mist hangs soft over the water while the bird calls out, unseen by most, yet certain of its place in the waking world. There is something of a psalm in it, a small voice lifted before the world stirs, praise offered not because anyone is listening, but because it is time.
Tchefuncte Requiem
Built in 1951, the towboat MV Freedom now rests half-sunk at the river's mouth, taken down by Hurricane Katrina. She rusts like a body laid to sleep, patient beneath a sky torn between fire and blue. Photographed from a kayak at daybreak, storms gathering in the distance, there is a stillness here that feels like rest finally granted, a burden set down after years of labor upon the water. The wreck no longer strains against the current. She has come to the end of her toil, and found her rest at last.
Unseen Wind
Along the Mandeville lakefront at dusk, a Brown Pelican (Pelecanus occidentalis) skims low over the water, wingtips catching the day's last gold light. Flying parallel to shore, barely off the surface, it moves with a quiet economy of effort, each wingbeat carrying it forward without wasted motion. There's something of faith in that low, steady flight, a trust in what holds it up though it cannot see the wind beneath its wings. Strength doesn't always announce itself. Sometimes it simply moves forward, carried by a power greater than itself, faith the assurance of things unseen, hope the quiet confidence that we are held.