[ Tuesday, May 18, 2004 ]
We strolled the boardwalk from Lafayette Park at dusk, watching birds and minnows in the shallows among the marsh grasses, and a trio of boys who played at casting lures from the pavilion at the end of the pier.
Something surfaced and blew spray to the west as we approached, so we asked the boys if they had seen dolphins.
“No dolphins,” the tallest one said. “There was a couple o' mana-tees.”
I had not heard of manatees in this area, but have since been told that they have been spotted in bayous around Bay County as well. Of course, we had seen manatees at water parks in the past, but the idea of sighting one in its natural environment intrigued us.
We leaned on wooden rails and scanned the calm, dark water of Apalachicola Bay. Ripples betrayed the eastward movements of something large and slow, but difficult to track because of the long period it could spend immersed.
Shortly, a walrus-like snout broke the surface, sprayed water, and rolled downward with a lazy flip of its ragged flat tail. Somewhere in that moment of surprise, I managed to take a picture.
The boys were not impressed. They continued to play at casting. One of them hooked another’s shirtsleeve (and a little skin). One of them climbed onto pilings to disturb a sleeping moth.
We waited and watched the water grow darker, the moon climb higher, the sun disappear behind the Victorian homes and centuries-old oaks along bluff above the salt marsh. From the park came the sounds of people playing fetch with their dogs and, closer in, the gentle lapping of water against the pilings and birds in the marsh grass.
The peace of the place was hypnotic. For what must have been several minutes (but may have been only seconds), I didn’t think about the world, about terror or work or schools or bills or any of those things that nibble at your consciousness day and night.
“There!”
I turned in the direction my wife pointed, but not quickly enough to spot the creature. It was far away now, somewhere closer to the moon and the arch of the Gorrie Bridge, and I was lethargic in rousing from my momentary reverie. I didn’t see it.
But it was enough that we were there, together with the manatee, and boys casting lures, and folks playing fetch in the park.
We were there in the dusk of the world, there in the moonrise.
It was enough.
Peace.
**
(The preceding originally appeared as one of my weekly "Undercurrents" columns for The News Herald in Panama City.)
Unknown [1:16 PM]
