Last of the epics......

I decided that George"s Island was going to be where I would watch the epic orange moonrise that was slated
to happen the other night. I was determined to end my summer kayaking adventures on a high note and the "Boston Haabah" was always a good place to do that. George's Island is a Civil War military training fort turned Confederate prison gone recreational state park. It lies in the Boston Harbor and is used as a hub to all the other harbor islands. A usually bustling tourist area, off season and after the last water taxi leaves for the night, you have the island all to yourself. I did stumble across the exception, an amazingly cute park ranger couple laying under a blanket awaiting the moonrise themselves, living life how I often wish I could.
The envigorating surrealness of wandering this island never ceases to amaze me. Boston is so close it feels as though I could hit it with a well thrown rock, but at the same time you may as well be a million miles away. The only sound is the gentle off shore breeze and the rhythmic lapping of the waves. The occasional plane flies over head, leaving me standing on the beach staring off at it and wondering where it's going. Breaking through the horizon, just beyong Little Brewster's lighthouse, was a giant orange glow, soon giving way to the flawlessly round orange moon. The harvest was over, or beginnig, I can't remember, regarless. This was the Harvest Moon in all it's glory. A little anticlimactic I will admit but it got me out there so it was worth it. The real fun came as I slid back into my often times uncomfortably narrow kayak and shoved of from shore into the mostly black night. After being lost on the island for slightly longer than I was comfortable with I was glad to be back at the kayak but now I had to paddle back.
With some niave and unscientific logic I had convinced myself that the ocean was calmer at night and my paddle home would be easier, not so. It was colder, chopier, darker, and a lot more unnerving than my journey there. The ocean seeemed to have lost it's rhythym. Waves came from all sides as though it were a giant bowl of soup being carried up stairs by a five year old.
Cold water began to soak me and I began to feel less and less in control, like I ever really was. This is about the time I start to second guess my thinking this was a good idea. There are no other boats around, it pitch black and I am now halfway between where I cam from and where I'm going, and I'll tell you it's hard to think of the glass half full when your boat is too. When the front of that boat hits the shore there is such a rush of "I can't believe I just did that and made it back OK" that despite the exausted feeling in my shoulders and arms I feel like I could go out and do it again right then and there. Realizing how bad an idea that really is I channel that energy into shouldering my boat up the beachand throwing it on the roof of my Jeep. Another sucessful adventure and another story to tell.
A random passerby in my life once told me to "Live for the Stories"....... I have adopted this as my mantra and finally hoping to share some of those stories. I do not make any claims to being anything other than a photographer. I love life and the adventures you can find within it. Whether it be wandering along manicured and paved faux jungles of the zoo with a brightly colored map that even your 3 year old can decifer or heading off underequipt to live in Fairbanks Transit Bus 142, adventures are what you make of them.