Newnan's Lake - Northeast

After watching videos like this for an hour last night, I decided it was time to put my big boy pants on and quit talking about alligators until one actually attacks me. Never mind that I seem to startle one every time I go out now. So what? Also, it took my girlfriend, who doesn't paddle every morning but who grew up in Florida, to tell me that they enter the water, not to be aggressive, but to escape land, where they feel trapped in the presence of bigger animals. So I hugged the eastern shore of Newnan's, in between the tussocks and next to the cypress caves because I also wanted to avoided bigger animals--namely the airboating gator hunters, coming back empty-handed again, no doubt. 


Using my camera instead of my phone, as you may have noticed, has allowed me to capture actual wildlife, but this has come at a price. My kayak must have come with the ability to steer directly where I don't want it to when I turn to snap a picture. In the case of the Great Blue Heron at the right, I ended up in a thatch of bullrush with a fat-bellied spider web--and its current resident--wrapped around my head. By the time I had disentangled the web and spider, it lay in a wet clump on the surface of Newnan's Lake. My apologies, dear spider. I'm sure it was a lovely home you had built. I also nearly smacked into several wasps' nests big enough to house my extended family, but I guess the early morning torpor prevented them from raising the cry.

My Kayak KonsoleTM arrived the other day but frankly I had gotten used to not having it. Nevertheless it gives me added "protection" and provides a a good place to house my camera until it inevitably falls into the water someday. The Konsole also makes entering and exiting the kayak a bit more difficult, as the line of scabs on my shins attests.


A ways up the shore from where I was paddling are the native canoes from 3,000 to 5,000 years ago. These were uncovered during a recent drought and remain there, too fragile to move. I don't pretend that my middle-class pleasure crafting in any way compares to what they did to simply survive, but to say I wasn't gratified to be paddling the same waters they did would be a lie. I love Newnan's like a family member at this point; it changes its story with every paddle.