Well, I thought that the big splash of the morning would be the Wood Duck nest that has been started in the new box hard by the boardwalk, the one that is easy to see but hard to walk to through the cattails and brambles. But other events were brewing. The park staff had designated today Wetlands Awareness Day.
Myra and I worked the upper wetland and then came down to lower Banyard Run. I came up to box #62 and carefully opened the box from the side. I spied the white teardrop-eye of a female Wood Duck. Now when we unintentionally find a hen in a box, she is just as likely to flush through the side door as she is through the entrance hole at the front of the box. So I took a step backwards, in case she went for that route, with optional gut evacuation. I stepped back, and then my world turned into a slow-motion backfall into a foot of water and six inches of mud, as I uttered imprecations all the way down.
Paul (nursing a recently-sutured foot) and Myra were sympathetic, but there isn’t much you can do to help out a guy who’s just found his own awareness of the wetland in the seat of his jeans. I splodged back to the parking area. At least the water wasn’t early-March cold the way it was the last time that I fell in.
Most of my gear is air-drying or in the laundry. Too soon to tell whether my optics suffered any permanent damage.
Why is it that this sort of thing never happens to Annie Dillard?