Mammoth Goes Visiting and Camps Along The Way, Day 2

Tue 1 August

Nothing like sleeping just a  little too late and waking up to find that my elderly dog has failed to hold his bladder. He flooded the linoleum floor--not the carpet, luckily! and soaked the mat under the water dish. He tries his best, poor thing. I blame myself.

More birds this morning--both great egret and snowy egret, yellow warbler (I think, could be Prothonotory but I'll need to check), Turkey Vulture and Bald Eagle.

Deep(-ish) thoughts while wandering around....

But first, quick note: I forget that the advantage of State Parks over COE Parks is the trail system. Almost all state parks have trails; almost no COE parks do. Turkey Roost at Cedar Ridge is a notable exception.  The National Forest down by Houston has nice trails.

Dots in the distance is the pair of geese

Back to deep thoughts. For all so many years, on a morning like this, I'd get out of bed, pack a breakfast and lunch (usually prepared the night before), get in the car and drive for forty-five minutes. Sit in an office and have that first and second cup of coffee, work work work, then take a lunch break.  For the last couple of years working, I'd have a one-hour walk and then a lunch at my desk. And then work work work until time to go home and have that first beer.

And now I feel a vague nostalgia for the life. But is that the life I want? Or ever wanted?

Not at all. I just miss it because I had a sense of purpose--to earn a living for myself and my family, put food on the table and gas in the tanks, and save up money for retirement.  Now, in that long awaited but never envisioned retirement, I feel purposeless and a little lost sometimes.

But isn't this just what I wanted, all those years?  I did some cogitation on the question and came up with an answer....

No. Or at least, not exactly. I didn't want to be going to boring Corp of Engineers parks just because they were close by. It's one thing to stop at a boring park because it's a half-way point on the way to something exciting, but nothing at all to stop just because it's on the way to somewhere that's also not at all exciting.

In this case, we're headed to visit Ed's mother in Arkansas. But we didn't have to do that, not so soon after the last trip. I could have planned a trip to the ocean, or maybe somewhere farther north. I only had five weeks to work with between the last trip and the next one, so this is what I came up with. I need to work harder on coming up with destinations, even if they're ridiculously close to home. At least some places with different bird life.

My "job" right now is fairly well defined. I need to (1) Wind down the contract work, as quickly and neatly as possible. (2) Travel, as much and as thoughtfully as possible. (3) Improve the house and the property so that it will be a pleasure to pass on to Edward, to inhabit or sell. In the short term, that means: painting; keeping the jungle at bay; planting trees to replace the ones dying off. Painting I can do now, during the hot months of August and September. The jungle can be chiseled away, but big effort needs to wait for cooler weather. But not for long.

Back to Meanders -----------------------
In the afternoon I went out and took a nap on the bench by the lake. Well, probably not a real nap involving actual sleep, but close enough. A cool breeze from the Northwest came across the water from time to time, and it was enough to keep me happy for a long time.

The Anhinga was hunting along the edge of the lake when I first went out. He mostly stayed underwater, putting up his head from time to time. Maybe to check out me; I dunno. Hope I didn't disturb his hunt.

Lot of birds, especially on the opposite side of the lake. I can see why the web page called this a "birders heaven." But it's mostly egrets and herons, with a few crows thrown in for noise relief.

Author David Gessner in Soaring With Fidel writes that "ornithologists have a specific word for Whitman's 'irresistible call to depart.' They call it Zugunruhe, a German word for the restlessness birds feel before they migrate. Similar to the stomping of nervous deer, it is the general unease, the bristling, of a creature about to embark on a journey.

Is this a feeling I feel every day? Is this the feeling that makes me remark that "three days is about as long as I ever want to stay in one campground"? Even in the most interesting of campgrounds, after a couple of days I'm beginning to look to departure day with anticipation--"Only one more day;" or... "only two more days". Better yet, this is the last day--tomorrow we move on.  It's a constant, eternal Zugenruhe...my own personal irresistible call to depart.

I feel it now, and it is indeed, a "tomorrow we move on" feeling. I like it here, especially after hearing that there is a pair of foxes that visit the campground host in the evenings Maybe there are more, and I might encounter one here?

LATER
 

As the sun was setting, the alligator went from north to south across the lake. He just tootled across the lake, pretty far out, like he was on a mission and knew where he was heading. Maybe looking to eat the pair of geese that hung out on the shore. But he never went up onto the low, muddy shoreline, just hung out there in the shallows until it was too dark to see him.

Here's the picture -- that black "line" out in the water, just to the right of the sun, is him. If I blow it up you can almost but not quite see it well enough from the photograph.