Quarter Mile In, Motor Down

In short: The stump found us before we found it. A quarter mile from Murray's Landing, the trolling motor caught something solid underwater. Dead stop. Tina and I looked at each other. Walked the canoe back to the truck and drove home.

Came back with boards, a saw, and a drill. Built a mount right there at the landing. Hour and a half of fixing what should've been fixed before we left. The St. Mary's wasn't going anywhere.

The river was running low. Lower than I'd seen it. We dragged the canoe across sandbars most of two days. Picked a camp spot on the Georgia side and watched an eight-foot gator slide off the Florida bank across from us. He'd been there first. We stayed anyway.

Something hit our pole that evening. Took it right into the river while we weren't looking. Never saw what it was. The St. Mary's keeps things to itself.

Morning made up for it. Seven blue cats. Four redbreast. Whitley — she's fifteen now, bad hips most days — ran that sandbar with River Dog like neither of them had ever been old or young. Just dogs on sand, doing what dogs do.

The river runs the state line here. Georgia on one bank, Florida on the other. The gator never did come back to his spot. Maybe he found better water downstream. Maybe he was watching from somewhere we couldn't see.

‹ All field notes