This is it. The best moment

of the day, she thought, lifting her cup for a sip of coffee.

The sky is fresh and bright,

the coffee just right, the cool breeze offset by the strengthening sun's

rays. As the boat swung slowly around its anchor line, she could see most

of the shore of the Tennessee cove where they'd spent the night, without

turning from her seat in the stern.

She smiled and chided herself:

About an hour ago, you said that was the best time of the day, lying in

the warm cocoon of the bunk, watching the fog blow under the aft canopy.

Its tendrils tapping silently on the window just heightened the pleasure

of warm toes under multiple layers of blankets and sweatshirts in the

cabin's 41 degrees. Then the sky drew back its shy foggy veil to show

its purest blue. Hard to envision that the stars were still up there exactly

as they were last night before the full moon whitewashed over them.

A trio of crows crossed the

cove at treetop height, appearing to swim with steady wing beats, one

giving the sentinel cry as he flew: Caaah! Caw-caw! In a few minutes the

same three sounded like a pack of dogs on the scent of a fox, as they

turned to drive away a soaring red-tailed hawk.

Contentment seeped into her

pores with the sun. The silvery side of a fish dazzled briefly above the

dark ripples pursuing or being pursued? The water did not allow the casual

observer to learn its deeper secrets.

From inside the cabin came

the sounds of dishes sliding into their rack, the coffee pot jangling

into the pots-and-pans cabinet. Gradually the clatter gave way to the

brooding slow movement of a Beethoven symphony on the University of Tennessee's

public radio station. We can leave whenever you want, he said, stepping

into the cockpit, or we can just stay here all day if you're enjoying

it.

She asked for, and got, a little

more time. To anticipate the day, she thought, or maybe to forestall the

spending of this last day on the river. After nearly a month, she knew

the day still held more "best moments," the more to be cherished

for their also being the last.

Funny how pleasure is enhanced

surrounding it, or the fading starlight by the morning fog. She grieved

pulling away from these banks that show no sign of human incursion, where

Virginia creeper sends a flame up a tree trunk, and where, one morning,

an impossibly tiny doe came to the beach to drink.

But the moment of departure

was such a triumph, as she thought of her husband pulling the anchor loose

while she applied power, the boat finally taking its head and breaking

free of its restraints, heading out to open water.

What will this day bring? A

close encounter with a bald eagle flying so low across the bow she could

see its yellow eye assessing them as it flew? Searching out and finding

a daymarker necessary to identify the entrance to a wildlife management

area? A glimpse of wood ducks in grassy banks? Perhaps a barge-sighting,

less common now that lock repairs had interfered with scheduling, but

always a spectacular demonstration of one man's skill maneuvering thousands

of tons of ore on a wandering current.

She looked forward to the day

even as she regretted leaving the morning. The music from inside was building

to the conquering burst of the tenor's message Freedom! and she could

hear the faint chirp of navigational instruments being set and checked.

A shadow swept over her; the irritated gronnkk! of a great blue heron

echoed.

A single burgundy leaf spiraled

from a sweetgum to the water's surface, done with its summer job manufacturing

food for the straight trunk and roots that had supported it. The sweetgum

couldn't know that it is doomed. The same action of wavelets and wakes

that cuts away cliffs, exposing caves and sheaves of stone stacked high

up the bluffs, also erodes the bank where trees reach outward for sunlight.

In another season, the sweetgum's grasp on the earth will loosen, and

one windy night it will topple into the water to begin its next existence

as a fish habitat until it finally returns to soil where unborn grasses

will lodge and send down stabilizing roots.

A tiny wisp of cloud drifted

into the blue field over her head. One life, one morning, one moment cycles

into the next, she thought, opening the clattering wooden doors and stepping

into the boat's cabin. The symphony had been replaced by a spirited Bach

fugue which yielded to a commentator and then the news.

What she heard of new conflicts

and dead sailors was so much like the Tom Clancy she'd been reading, she

felt a jolt of confusion: Which was fact, which fiction?

I guess it's time to go, she

said.

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