Christian Photographers Community

On the first day of December, I woke up at 1:30 in the morning to canoe out at two on a river that would take me and seven others to the Gulf of Mexico, from which we would arrive at a beach to meet up with our other group on our canoe trip through the Florida Everglades. At the outset, it seemed like we were floating between an immense array of stars. The water was perfectly still, so it reflected the billions of stars in the crystal clear sky (I thank God that it was clear that morning) and we were caught between the two. All was silent, save for our own voices and the sound of our canoes moving through the water. Every time our paddles struck the water, it sparkled with phosphorescence in the black ripples, and every so often a paddle would strike a little jellyfish, causing it to light up. Everything sparkled in the dark.

Finally, we knew we were at the end of the river, for the absence of the shadows of trees along the shores. Before us lay a vast expanse of darkness that we knew was the ocean.

As the first gleams of dawn began to creep ever so slowly over the horizon, we got stuck. The water in the area we were going through is notoriously shallow. We wound up with four canoes- each bearing two people and goodness knows how much equipment- stuck in the mud beneath a mere six inches of water. In three of the canoes, both passengers got out of the canoe to push it through the muck. Nathan, the boy in my canoe with me, got out and told me to stay in the bow of the boat because it made it easier for him to push the canoe. So, while dawn came upon us suddenly, I was getting pushed across the mud flats by a dear friend, looking back at people who have become my family push through the struggle we all had together.

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