Yesterday we went on a short boat ride.  This was the first ride since we had a bunch of work done on it.  My father-in-law used to say the two best days in your life were the day you got your boat and the day you got rid of it.  I sorta know what he meant.  I won’t bore with all the details.  We had just turned around to head home when I saw some splashes in the Intracoastal  and I (this is so unlike me) just idled down and stopped to see what was going on.  There was a pod of dolphins, about six or seven, hunting just off our starboard (right) bow.  The come up about 5 feet in front of us.  It was totally amazing.  I have never been that close to dolphins before.  We watched them frolic and play and hunt for about 10 minutes and they moved off too far for us to see very well, so we too headed off.

As we were going along about a mile or so on, we saw another single dolphin.    Another mile or so on and we saw another pod.  This one was five or six and they hunted around us for a while and came up really close to our boat, but they left pretty soon.  Dolphins are amazing beings.  They seem so carefree and agile.  I have watched them frolic before, but have never seen so many in one day or so many so close.  There was a flock of pelicans that we flew through and egrets flying around and landing to fish.  Marine animals are  so much better at fishing than us.  Sure we humans have those big factory ships that get tons and tons of fish at once, but that is hardly sporting.  Birds and dolphins fish to survive and eat what they catch.  We catch just to catch and I wonder how much we waste?

I’m not a very good fisherman.  I get bored and I am impatient.  I say that I like to sit with a bucket of beer and fish, but maybe it is just that I like a bucket of beer and sitting.  Maybe I just like sitting in general.  Life is too short to hurry through it.  We Americans (folk who live in the USA) could take lessons from other cultures.  We eat dinner (supper) too early and then snack all evening.  We should have two hour dinners with lots of courses and lots of wines.  We should sit on the back deck in the cool of the evening and just listen to the sounds nature makes all around us.  I need to learn to stop for dolphins more often.

I want to say thank you to all who read and follow this blog.  I invite you to tell your friends and co-workers and family about me if you like what I write.  I love your comments.  If you read these meanderings often, please consider following my blog.  I am trying to grow my audience and one way I can see how many readers I have is by how many followers I have.

The day is waning and I have stuff to do.  Y’all come again.