The River of Life

Thank you so much to everyone for the views, comments, stars, and favorites on yesterday's Blip. Thank you for sending it to the spotlight pages. I'm humbled and touched by your kind and heartfelt remarks. I am rushing from thing to thing today, but will respond to each and every comment as soon as I get a chance, which is most likely to be in a day or two.

I have been thinking a lot lately about the things that I love, that motivate me, that make me smile, that keep me going from day to day. Each day, I try to do the things that I must do, of course. But I also try to set aside and protect a little time each day just for my own enjoyment, and that often means a quick morning trek somewhere - even if only for 15 minutes - with my camera. Morning is a precious time. After the darkness, the light comes again, and I take it as a powerful symbol of hope: each morning, a chance to begin again. As often as I can manage it, I try to arrive and stand at the edges of things to watch the show.

We've had a lot of storms lately, and on this morning, there was a break in the rain just as I was driving to work. So I seized the opportunity to make a quick visit to Millbrook Marsh. It was misty and the boardwalk was a bit slick from the rain. Things were very, very green; strangely, I suddenly thought of my area as the great northern rain forest. You'd think so to look at it. Everything is still lush and verdant, even in August.

I walked along Thompson Run and noted that the bushes nearby were loaded with bright red berries. Several groups of young mallards - not babies, but young adults - were hanging out around the stream, going about their regular daily mallard tasks. One group headed downstream, while another went up it. I watched the upstream crew sneak along the bank, quiet as could be. Stealth-mallards, I thought. If you didn't already know they were there, you wouldn't even see them coming.

This is the part of their journey where they wandered into the middle of the creek and crossed several rocks. The current, while steady, wasn't strong enough to deter them on their journey. They had their whole day before them. The water was cool and there was mist along the stream. It might not be a bad life, being a duck, I thought.

Standing on a wooden observation platform along the stream, I leaned out as far as I could with my camera to get this shot, framing the ducks with the green trees and the red berry bushes. The little stream suddenly seemed like more to me: like the river of life, flowing from the land of plenty; or maybe the river of dreams. If you interviewed the mallards, I'm sure they'd agree . . .

The soundtrack: Billy Joel, The River of Dreams.