Moraine State Park May 14, 2022, Saturday Air 75°F/24°C
Eric and I got underway an hour and ten minutes after the appointed time of seven. It is good to see him. He is an occasional kayaker, as in when I can drag him out with me. The drive up to Moraine State Park nets big puffy clouds and bright blue skies and a chance to catch up. We pulled into McDaniel’s launch, the docks empty. We unloaded Blue and the orange kayak, a 14.5-foot Riot Edge. I have never felt the affection for the orange one that I do for Blue. Blue was with me through so many adventures during our first season of kayaking. I guess that it is the closest I will ever come to understanding why guys name their cars.
I send a quick text to my daughter, letting her know we are headed left and towards the Hidden River Creek. We paddle slow, easy strokes. It’s been a few years since Eric last came with me. There’s that before covid thought. It took him a couple moments to remember how to paddle in Blue, something I realize I have to do every time I take her out in the beginning of the season. Blue is not my primary boat anymore. But she still holds a place in my heart. She is better for smaller water like creeks.
Sometimes it’s nice to have a friend to chat with, and sometimes it’s nice to paddle alone. I met Eric 15 years ago at work. He was going to my alma mater, the Art Institute, which gave us a creative background to build a friendship on. He’s one of the few people who came kayaking after saying he wanted to, most chicken out. He loves to discover things in nature as much as I do.
There’s a boat full of Amish men fishing and a pair in a canoe. It looks like they hired a guy in a baseball cap and red t-shirt to drive the boat for them. None of the fishermen we passed had caught anything.
We paddle into every cove. A woman lay totally relaxed on top of her kayak, soaking up the sun, and a man fishes from his peddling kayak; we paddle between them into Hidden River Creek.
Trilliums in white and purple and small Vilas violets cover one side, and coral-colored columbine grows in the ridges of the rocky wall on the other side. The sun shows through in patches through the trees. Eric paddles ahead, discovering a small fish. A raccoon hisses at me through an opening to his cave in the rock wall. The coon backs up to where I could no longer see it, and I backpaddle. We paddle up to the bridge. The water is high enough, we could continue up the creek.
He asks, “Can we make it under?”
I say, debating, “It depends on whether we could make it under without encountering spiders.”
Eric looks at the webs hanging from the side of the bridge and says,” I’m good to turn around and paddle back.”
The man in the kayak with pedals informs us that nothing’s biting.
In one small cove, we encounter whirligig beetles. As we paddle, they shoot across the top of the water in diamond and zigzag patterns. Watching them is so much fun.
I say, “They are able to move 39” per second.”
Eric, says, “That’s really fast.”
“I was just reading about them last week. It is so awesome to see!”
We are both smiling as the whirligig beetles streak from our paddles and boats.
Paddling the edges, there is some shade. Before we leave the cove, fiddlehead ferns’ distinctive heads are beginning to unfurl. I have heard you can eat them, but there are only a few patches of them between small patches of skunk cabbage, and they appear to be covered in white hairs, two dozen or so heads. I think about the Girl Scout rule of 12. I remember being in a field of black-eyed susans on a hot summer day at Laurel Mountain Camp. There were 11 or so of us.
Our counselor said something like, “There must be at least twelve for every one you pick.” Before a couple of eager hands could snap the stems, she said, “So, that’s 132 for each of you to pick one flower each.”
When is one ever enough? We all looked longing at the black-eyed susans. Eyes darted back and forth trying to calculate a couple of hundred flowers.
She said, “Now multiply that by the whole camp.” No one picked any flowers.
The couple dozen are spread over one side of the cove in clumps of five, six, and seven. How many would it take to make a meal? Are they the right kind? I text my dad, the herbalist, a photo of them and ask, are these the ones you can eat? We linger in the cove to see if he is by his phone. Later, dad will tell me, “People fry them. You should have got some, here I thought you were starting to live from the land. I was proud.” I wish he lived closer so I could learn more from him.
We paddle around the island, encountering a pontoon boat at the end; another man with a plethora of fishing rods on the back of his boat says he’s out learning how to fish and hasn’t caught a thing.
