Kamilche Almanac #1

My boss called me this morning and said: no work, you can go back to bed. I said too late , I'll watch the fog rise over the water. Then all of a sudden I was walking down the road towards the dock with fleece and stocking cap in garb where my trusty orange canoe lay waiting. It was still quiet and low visibility obscured the mostly "civilized" shores of Kamilche. Old pilings stood out of the water as the only navigable objects. I cruised through them and admired the crusted barnacle-mussel clusters and the tunicates and anemones that lived lower (and only on the north facing sides). Apart from the opportunity to paddle spontaneously and early (normally I would be trudging down the freeway towards Yelm) I was on a mission to spot the bald eagles that nest somewhere around here. They haven't been around lately and I was wondering if they took off for the summer or what. I fought the tide moving out of Little Skookum Inlet and skulked around with my binoculars spotting only the ubiquitous gulls and cranky dinosauric herons that hang around here. In great abundance were mergansers flying about and resting in the firs above the mucky yucky beach. I think they are just stopping on their way south because I never see that many around here. They seemed to have an inefficient way of flying compared to the local gulls. No soaring or drafting, just flap-flap-flap. I strained to heat the sound of their wings against the growing buzz of saws and drills coming from a house being worked on across the water. No escape, as I walked back to my house I heard the nailguns slamming against plywood down the street. Reminders of what I would normally be doing at this hour. Lucky me. But no eagles.