h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

As I was lying on my bed last night wishing that it was cooler in our bedroom and thinking about how I was getting up at 4:30 and I wasn't sleeping I remembered a couple of things that I was going to be SURE and mention in my description of the idyll on the river.

One was coming around a corner and seeing an enormous sycamore log that had lain in the river for many years. It had no bark left on it, and it was twisted and weathered to a beautiful gray. There, lying arranged amongst the lines of grain that twisted up to a root wad, was a beautiful water snake, sunning himself in the early morning rays of the sun. He was completely unconcerned as we floated by and admired him, and me without my camera. I'm never floating without it again, that's it, period.

And later on in the afternoon, as it began to get hot and steamy, we rounded the corner and found ourselves enchanted by what the local floaters refer to as The Shelter Cave. It isn't very deep, it nestles under a tall bluff. There are openings back in the back wall that lead deep underground, and as you sit in your canoe on the river you can feel Mother Earth's air conditioning drifting over you as the cave breathes. Above the entrance is a strata that houses a small spring. It drips gently from the overhangs and bumps in the rock. You sit on the river, no motors or planes to disturb you. You close your eyes and listen, and hear the river tinkle behind you, a few quiet percussive fluty plonks as water fills cavities in the bluff beside you and then empties. Around you you hear the calls of warblers, cardinals, titmice, chickadees. The bird song starts to engulf you, you realize how noisy nature can be. Then in the background, the occasional drip drip falls quietly to the rock below as the little spring oozes the life giving moisture drop by drop from the limestone high above your head. When you finally open your eyes to look up there, you can see the sparkling drops fall one by one, a seemingly slow and placid flight through the shady spaces. Moisture darkens the rock. At each little hollow where the spring water exits the rock, a fern has found a crack to root in. The fronds fan out against the dark rock. Down the face of the bluff the years of moisture have traced paths of color: white, tan, red, black. Behind the colors painted on by the water lies the grain of the rock.

As we sat there drinking in the cool and calm, high above us a red tailed hawk called to her young one, the high falling "Cheeeee" awoke us from our trance. There are predators out there. We have a long way to float to our take out. Time to take our leave. We sigh, turn our noses downstream, and paddle on.