The Kid on the Running Board

Yes, the dream has been realized! Yahoo! I have finally paddled a canoe in a warm location during the winter. Winter for me has always been snow and icicles and temperatures hovering around or below freezing. It doesn’t matter whether you are measuring the outdoor temperature in Celcius or Fahrenheit, when rivers and lakes freeze over it’s not only too cold to paddle, it becomes physically difficult.

Today I add the Tomoka River in Florida to the bodies of water I have paddled on. Turned out to be not that different than Ontario canoe country. Great Blue Herons and Belted Kingfishers flushing before I could get close enough for good photographs, Pileated Woodpecker holes in the trees. For a time I felt like I had been transported by flying canoe a thousand miles north to Algonquin Park. But no, the trees and shrubs were different. Yes, there were some pine trees, but overall the flora was different, except for the colour, everything was green.

It was good to have a paddle in my hands again. I didn’t get on the water last year. I have missed this. And it’s always neat to combine two passions, canoeing and nature photography. There were several Florida birds that allowed me to approach close enough to capture some good images. Photographing them from the water, shooting towards the shoreline, gives bird images a different perspective.