I carefully step out of my kayak and into the wild.
I’m at home here.
There’s a half-mile walk to the end of
The strip of land between the two bodies of water.

Earth has never felt so close-
I feel the ambience gently pressing in around me.
Almost dusk, I begin my weekly walk down this path of nature
with no particular mission or purpose.

It seems as though every time I step,
I trigger some vague creature’s movement.
In the mysterious bushes ahead of me,
A small bird stirs and, as I walk past, is adamant in his position.

I laughed at the protective bird with mirth.
When I notice that it is protecting its three tiny eggs in that bush,
I turn around to leave the bird in peace,
I notice that there is a turtle in the water who was covertly observing the entire incident with its minute head poking out of the water.

I smile at the turtle, and he is once again gone-
Under the water to share what he saw with the rest of his lake-friends.
Walking through the swarm of erratic, annoying gnats ceased my smile,
And I murmur unkind words to myself about the pesky insects.

Not long after, I encounter a yellow-tailed snake- highly poisonous.
The small snake coiled up into a shape similar to that of a rolled up water hose.
He seemed agitated; I assume that I beatified the snake when I simply walked around him- leaving him in peace.
There’s no reason for me to disturb our peace on such a calm day.

I look off into the distant lake to my left and see a large alligator.
I quickly judge with my ambiguous Louisiana intuition that it’s about eight feet or more.
Though their appearance may be striking and violent,
I don’t think alligators have any intention of hurting humans at all.

During my distant encounter with the large gator,
A duck takes of the water with a great deal of commotion.
I immediately snap back to reality, and I’m startled by the sudden sounds.
How absurd. The snake didn’t even abhor me as much as the duck did about how I had accidentally approached them.

Finally, I reach the end of the strip of land.
The sun is down now, and the woods become more mysterious.
“Time to head back,” I think to myself.
I turn and take my first step back to my kayak with hesitation as I avert my attention to the fireflies above me.