My friend Nola loves to kayak and invited me to join her for a short trip. I had purchased a kayak last summer and rented it out several times but had never been in it myself. I intended to go but I felt somewhat intimidated to go out by myself since I have never been in a kayak. So when she called yesterday I jumped at the chance to have my own mentor show me the ropes. As we drove across the Little Black Bridge, Nola said "I love the Little Black." When I asked her why ,she only replied "...because God lives there." Well said Nola and that was good enough for me.
Nola grew up on the bank of the St John River where the Little Black dumps in. She told me how when she was she was a kid, the local swimming hole was across the river and it was common for 20 or 30 kids to be hanging out and swimming off the dock. She said because she was lazy, instead of walking across the bridge to get there, she would swim across the river. That sounds like more work to me. Her childhood home is gone now, first burned to the ground in the 50's, rebuilt only to be taken away by the big ice jam in 1991, but her family still keeps the place mowed and camps out there during the summer.
We floated along effortlessly and only got held up once when we got out of the channel and stuck on bottom in shallow water. The only excitement was when we saw the rare sight of a sheriff drive by and when Nola found a spider in her kayak.
It was hot and sunny when we started, but as we got closer to home the sky began darken up and we hurried along before the storm.
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