re: Favorite outdoor moment/experience

Ducks seem popular...

... it was just another day of creek boating on South Sauty Creek into Guntersville Lake. Was winding down from a hard day of play boating when mamma mallard breaks out into her broken wing routine. To draw me off and away. But it wasn't happening today. Being ahead of my crew I just stopped. It was a small pool between drops, slow water, an easy wait to see where the little ones were? It took them way longer than expected but eventually they started popping up all around me. Little baby ducks from underwater. Petite submersibles. I just sat there just sculling my paddle, slowly spinning my slalom boat around so to not excite or stare, as they appeared to not even know how to make a run for it. For the next twenty minutes or so nervous mama, I could make her out downstream, just watched (and tried to draw me out) as we floated through the next few rapids. They bobbed up and down and were certainly at home, riding high on each wave, with feet hardly paddling. We lazily floated through several small drops, catching eddies, and peeling back out. Keeping my paddle in the water, never lifting nor making any moves, they stayed there an arm length (or two) all around me. Maybe not my all time, very favorite, but certainly a day to long remember.

Another

... was watching otters off a secluded Monterrey Bay. It was a small out of the way beach and I took every pic on that roll, timing each shot, as they cracked open abalone. And then it happened, as I turned around, there was this magnificent french looking (to my eye) starlet sun bathing without any clothes. We nodded and spoke a few words as I headed on off to the car. All the time wishing that I had taken... just one fewer picture.... of clams being eaten.