Deer stand in the shallows, pausing for a morning drink, their heads and white tails popping up as we appear like ghosts out of the morning mist in our canoes. They leap nimbly into the brush and are gone.
Great blue herons are already poised on rocks and low branches, stone still as they prepare to snatch breakfast. Each one lifts like an angry little dinosaur, croaking with annoyance, yet flying only a hundred yards downstream, where we can scare them up repeatedly until they circle around upstream.