Our Lady of Perpetual Astonishment

My sunkissed nose and pale arms boast of winter’s farewell; we sweat now, in our wetsuits. Have you ever seen a Great Blue heron standing near its nest? Standing. In a tree. A Great Blue heron. Then, four adults near two nests just as we notice they swoop away. We can hear their wingbeats from here. These are rookeries along the Dolores River, which this year is brimming over pathways and into basements. This full waterway carries us ten miles per hour so that sometimes we can’t avoid running into the myriad wooden debris that has been washing down from mountains, our journeys combining on impact. Or the swamped young willow sprouts just reaching up out of the water, our boat adding injury to their insult. The breeze is warm in the canyon now and I can steer the rudder alright. We pull over in an eddy to eat lunch in the grass, spreading our life jackets for picnic blankets. One kid asks the group, “What’s your favorite day of the year?” And the lead teacher answers, “May 25, the last day of school.” Everyone appreciates this with a carefree kind of laughter. We have braved cold waters and now we enjoy the rewards of warmer days. There’s nothing like a bus load of sleeping teenagers heading home.