My son Isaac and I went on our maiden canoe voyage yesterday.

A couple of years ago, my wife and I talked about how much fun it would be to have a canoe.

Now we have 3.

I’m not sure how that all happens…but I frequently end up with more than I need. Too many good deals and people wanting to give me things, I guess.

Anyway, we took the old Blue Hole canoe down to the lake yesterday and went out when no one else was up or out on the lake.

It was so peaceful.

After paddling for a while we got to a section of the lake that I’ve never seen from the road….it must have been one of the camps because there were the typical camp buildings and docks.

I saw a big grey blob on one of the docks (I probably need new glasses) and when we went over to check it out, it turned out to be a Great Blue Heron.

We quietly paddled over to within about 5 or 10 feet of it and just sat and watched him while he watched us.

After doing this for a while, I guess I made a sudden move and he flew off to the cattails on the other side of the lake.

What could I do in a case like that but chase him over there?

So we went over and watched him wade through the shallow water by the edge….until he tired of us stalking him and flew off.

A Great Blue Heron is a big bird.  It was pretty impressive.

We went up to Asheville to visit our daughter at college yesterday, too.

We did the typical day of pizza and thrift stores….just goofing off and visiting.

She mentioned that she might want to reconsider her major…that the stuff they seemed to be working on wasn’t very interesting…that she couldn’t see how it related to her major.

That made me remember how much I had to wade through to get to the place where I got to do work that felt real.

Maybe it’s some twisted right of passage where the people setting up the programs say, “I had to do it…why shouldn’t they?  It’s the way it’s done.”

Maybe it’s a weeding out…seeing who has the dedication and drive to plow through all the BS adults place in their path…seeing who has the mental fortitude to keep going even when the road immediately ahead looks goofy as heck.

I’m not really sure how much of the things I did while I was in school felt very real.  It all felt like something I had to wade through to get to the “real life” on the other side of the wall.

But as hard as the “wading” ever was…as hard as the waiting ever was..the time I spent in school was some of the easiest and best times I had as far as suspecting I might know what my immediate future held for me.

I had a definite reason to postpone knowing what it meant to be the only one really defining what structure my life might have.

Taking responsibility for myself is a hard thing.

It’s hard to wade through most of the things we come up against in this life.  It seems like college is a place where we deal with more people telling us what to do than at other times…it feels like a slow march to get to where we want to be.

Keep wading, Zoe.

It’s a beautiful thing when you finally get to fly.