Have you ever watched a swallow-tailed kite sail over a mirror of spring water, dragging a talon as if a scalpel, opening aqueous skin?
Have you eavesdropped on a family of river otters as they breakfast on shellfish as audibly as nutcrackers on walnuts?
From a canoe, you might try witnessing a winter sunrise, a yellow poker piercing leafless wetland, warming your face.
Experiment with dipping a GoPro beneath cow lilies and later watch eelgrass undulate and minnows school.
It takes only a little imagination to see ghosts in tendrils of fog rising from comparably warm spring water.
It takes only a short while for your sense of smell to sharpen, to detect the body musk of swamp, funk of muck and perfume of blossoms.
Have you ever floated into a theater staged as cypress forest, cast with reptiles and raptors, and understood what your soul craves?
It’s out there.
Kevin Spear is an environmental reporter at kspear@tribpub.com
