“To give thanks in solitude is enough. Thanksgiving has wings and goes where it must go. Your prayer knows much more about it than you do.”
                        -Victor Hugo

Today is Thanksgiving Day. I have much to be grateful for and many blessings to count, so I'd like to think that for me, each day is Thanksgiving, just without all the turkey and company.

I began my day, as is one of my greatest pleasures, in my kayak, in a good bit of solitude, in gorgeous weather with favorable tides, with no real destination in mind. I began drifting down the Auger Hole and before I knew it, I was at New Pass, watching squadrons of pelicans take off and land on one tiny mangrove island about a half mile east of the Pass. It was such a congested flight path, I just had to chuckle. Giant silver birds flew over my head every five minutes or so in their own squadrons, making an approach to this area's busy international airport, shuttling thousands of holiday travelers here and there. At a much lower altitude, it seemed that even pelicans have airports where the flight-weary congregate.

I took this photograph a few years ago. It has long been a reminder to me to practice gratitude - always. Gratitude means taking nothing for granted. Gratitude allows me to have enough today, in every individual moment, which then allows me to live fully - without regret - in all the irretrievable moments of my life.

Gratitude is freedom.  Thanksgiving has wings.

“Seas of bright juice suffuse heaven.”
                        -Walt Whitman

I was up before dawn on this first day of "fall back". Bones creaked in the 47-degree cold as I climbed out of the warmth of the tent to a serenade of sandhill cranes, singing madly somewhere in the foggy dark. I'm up before sunrise to be on the water early today, then a mad dash for home.

Light began to blush over the watery prairie as I shivered, fumbling with coffee grounds and hot water. And then, before I had time for a first sip, the sun began to push up from behind the trees. Great clouds of steam mixed with the fog, each making its own art out of layers of vaporous moisture. Swampy scrub stood like eager children, hands raised in excitement while the sky became, as Walt Whitman describes, juice. A sea of apricot-tangerine-orange juice.

Such brief moments as this, tucked away in the depth of the forest where the quiet echoes off trees behind me and the prairie stretches for galaxies in front of me, are a sweet reward for abandoning my coffee with its equally delicious clouds of foggy, french roast steam.

Nikon D2x, Nikkor 24-120 VR @ 120mm, 1/125, f/16, ISO 320