the yellow kayak

We rented a sea kayak! How adventuresome we are.
After church, it was a little rainy and foggy and cold but we threw on sweatshirts and took the kayak out anyway for a grand self-guided tour of tributaries and coves all the way to old downtown, by the shipyard and back. Oh wow- it was so peaceful. It makes you want a waterproof panoramic camera even though you know you couldn’t capture the experience- the crispness of the air matched with the thickness of the mist in your lungs and the taste of the salt and the stickiness in your hair- You’re practically in the water, just dry with an oar in your hand, a still mist sits over the waters only occasionally pierced by the most graceful white crane; colorful wooden houses line the shore to the distant left and heavy woods sit still to the right. You pass 30 yr old lobster boats and a series of old, crooked docks with their barnacle-covered posts and dangling buoys revealed in low tide. Everything is quiet except for the fish that just jumped on your left.
I can’t believe I am here.

Before that, we had put in in the brackish waters of the inner bay/ mouth of the river and wondered under a bridge and to a little island that ended up having an intriguing history. The island had been used as a midway point on an 18th century highway bridge. We found the foundations of a toll booth and an inn in which George Washington once stayed. We also randomly found a geocache under a rock. There’s an old church downtown that George Washington once attended, still rings a bell that was recast by Paul Revere, has the oldest working organ in America, and displays one of only four copies of a particular Bible. The house next door to it has a lighting rod that was fixed there by Benjamin Franklin.