A Perfect Day on the New River

We spent many days like this when the children were younger.
Days where breakfast is a slow process, loading up boats and packing a picnic lunch are followed by a quiet, lazy trip down the river.
Where breaks for fishing, watching wildlife,
picking through river rocks, finding an island for lunch
and climbing trees break up the day into small and memorable pieces. Where the sun and the wind combine to form perfect temperatures and only mild sunburns on the spots that aren't exposed when we aren't in our river clothes.
With the children now grown, and a daughter in law paddling along, things haven't changed. Behind our mountain home there is a deep and quiet section of river that allows us to spend a whole day without seeing signs of civilization. Instead we watched hawks and herons, ducks and kingfisher, katys flies and log cabin flies, clams that opened and shut for us in the sun, and trout both at the end of our hook and swimming gently beside the canoes. Our youngest even showed us how to catch fresh water snails and judge if the water is clear or polluted.(Okay, after about four hours we did see a few cows, but...that's to be expected.)
Peace....