Hunting

“The river is calm,” the man said, walking past me and my boat. I nodded in agreement. But he wasn’t a boater, just a man at the launch at 7 in the morning with a cup of coffee and a cigarette.

The water grabs my ankles, seeps through my aqua socks. Too cold already.  I slip into my boat and settle in. A few strokes out I pause to take stock of a large freight boat shoving north. The water is calm, for now. Ten minutes later the bow of my boat slaps into the water.

The far shore is speckled with the early morning light, while the eastern shore remains cloaked in shade. I have on two jackets to keep warm. But the rotation of my shoulders and torso warms me quickly. I spy a few yellow-rumped warblers in the scraggly bushes that grow in the rocky shoreline.

The north Tivoli Bay lures me in. As I glide under the train overpass, the stillness of the bay immediately wraps me like a comfortable blanket. I stop paddling and coast.  In front of me is a dock that cut loose during Hurricane Irene. It washed into the Bay a few weeks ago and stands there, an odd adornment in a wide bay.

I move forward, wondering what treasures I will find this morning in the north bay when gunshots erupt from the reeds. My shoulders hunch. Duck season. I should have known that the same place I wanted to be would be where a hunter wanted to be. Part of me believes we can both be in this bay, part of me doesn’t want to get hit by a stray bullet.

Just as I decide I should backtrack onto the river I hear the call of a great horned owl.  Hoot hoot hoot hoot. It’s like a magnet to my heart and I forge into the bay. I follow close to the reeds, spying white throated sparrows, and  a chipping sparrow or two. Swamp sparrows peak out at me when I pish.  

Though I’ve decided to go into the bay, I’m not at ease. I try and calm my thoughts, which ping with ideas. The shots I heard were to the south. Hunters shoot at close range, and I’m visible in my pepto-bismol pink boat, wearing a blue jacket.

Truth is, I have respect for many hunters. They know these woods, the bays and the secret spots where ducks hide better than I do. They know ducks better than I do (this actually isn’t saying much! Ducks are low on the list of birds I am capable of identifying). But I wish they didn’t need to bring them out of the sky. As my friend Sonia said, “I just don’t like guns.” It’s that simple.

I spy a marsh wren, tail erect, in the cattails. A white throated sparrow practices its song. And then there’s the owl again. As I round a bend, my heart races, but not for the bird; I’m wondering if a hunter is around the corner. It’s happened before. But I often don’t see the hunters in their camouflage until I’m right next to them.

Today, though, there’s no hunter. And I start to wonder about insisting on paddling on, on insisting on sharing this marsh area when the sounds of guns in the distance leaves me on edge. The point of the paddle is to take in the morning light, the morning peace.

The owl hoots one more time, then I turn and take sure strokes back to the wide river.