The Narrative Image

I told Kip and Uncle Rico about a magical lake that drains at low tide revealing channels of flowing catfish that you can catch with a bucket. So we set sail, testing the waters as we went... ...but the pelicans already knew. Cafeteria queue  Uncle Rico strikes a classic heroic beer drinking pose (I call this one the '10 o'clock meeting') Last Friday when I left work, I thought I caught the faintest hint of autumn gently wafting on the breeze. This scene seemed to confirm the arrival of fall, but Uncle Rico reminded me we were downstream from a super fund site. End of summer lakes leave broad fertile plains around their perimeters. Uncle Rico and Kip engage in a competition to see who can catch the smallest fish. Dr. Jekyll clouds begin their amazing transformations. Far-away rumblings are carried on the wind. Even though the waning tide has begun to suck all the water out of the lake promising the w...

My brother Fred, Lance the authentic outdoorsman, Eric (expert at interpreting Boston accents), and I stood in the sand at the edge of Netarts Bay. Across the bay, the Netarts peninsula gleamed enticingly through the cool, hazy exhalation of the ocean. We had heard that the peninsula (a spit really) was a promised land of clams and crabs and we all carried shell fish licenses, shovels, rakes and collectively, a crab pot. Standing on the shore, we could feel the ocean in the act of respiration, breathing in and out with great twelve hour breaths. It had been breathing in all morning, filling its great watery lung to capacity, and now at last the ebbing tide slackened, was quiet and still, and began changing direction. We set out into the rising tide having deduced a statistically improved chance of not being swept out to sea by doing so. Well…we almost all set out. The inflatable raft which was meant to carry supplies that wouldn’t ordinarily fit into a kayak turned out to have a ...