Twoyaking: The act of paddling with one regular sized person and one smaller person (preferably the larger persons child) in a one person boat.

It is not exactly the easiest thing to do; taking photos from the kayak – made harder still with the addition of a 10 year old to the small boat. The missed shots mean nothing though, when compared to the time we’ve been having paddling about together. If you have the chance to cruise around in a kayak with your kid, I strongly recommend it especially if there’s the possible inclusion of beavers.

This was our second adventure of this type, each has been exceptional. I’m having a hard time thinking of a better way to spend time with my 10 year old daughter. Our trips about in the van are fun but the van is large and often the sights to see along the road fail to be more interesting than the iPhone or the tablet she carries. She will engage for a while and she especially likes to help me steer the car or hop in my lap and drive for a bit. We dont have the challenges with the boat, there simply isn’t room for anything else in there and our close proximity to each other lends itself well to the necessity of whispering and quiet to see the critters.
Last nights adventure found us in the marshy inlet waters of Jenny Gulch. I love it back there and paddle back that way often but this time the water was high enough that we could actually get back into shallow waters that are bursting with new life right now. We saw nearly a dozen blue herons all perched atop various pine trees, a couple beavers, a family of merganser and lots more.

I paddled closer and closer to the tree where the raptor was perched, clicking along the way.  About 20 feet from the bird I noticed  that he  was bobbing his head back and forth – my camera also shoots video and I thought I’d try to get some footage of this silly dance. So I switched over to video mode and fumbled to try to find the bird in the view finder and pull focus. Before I was able to even point my camera in the right direction the bird flew off the top of the tree, not away from me but straight down. It plunged ( no more than 8 feet in front of me) into the water until completely submersed and then popped back up again with a blue gill in its talons. It few up over my right shoulder and then off again back across the lake from where it had entered my life only minutes before.

I felt as though that moment lasted hours and every excruciating micro-second ticked on for eternity. I fumbled as if I had never held a camera before in my life. I felt a crushing blow of disappointment that battled intensity with overpowering excitement. I felt like i was going to explode and cry at the same time.