Wampum

I took the kids out for a walk today, out through the oak and palmettos to the lake. Airboats are to florida as snowmobiles are to the north, a buzzing in one's head that occasionally goes away. We found a turtle shell about a foot long, and I picked it up and strapped it on the backpack, and not too long afterward Jonah puzzled out my secret plan and began keeping time to his walking song tapping the turtle shell. We timed our crossing back across the treeless plain to the trees and shade by the passing clouds.

Two fish eagles, or one seen coming from the lake with fish, and later returning for seconds, no gators, and when I saw two cranes I told Gracie it was her turn, like Kezzie days earlier, to stalk the cranes, with the advice not to signal "hunter", not to approach directly.

Sam, Jonah and I sat down in the shade, and after a bit through a gap in the leaves I could see Grace bob and then bob again. When she returned she described imitating the cranes' gestures and making up her own. I told her when she dances in powwows, this is the experience she has to work with, this dancing with cranes, is her original material.

As the day slipped into evening I read while Jonah sang and beat on a small drum with the handle of a jump rope next to the kayaks, and two male turkeys slipped through the brush only two boat lengths away.