I went for a short paddle in honor of the solstice. About 40 degrees (if you wait til 2 pm) and damp but calm. Idyllic on the river.
Went around a bend and saw about a dozen whitetail in various stages of crossing the river.
So I gave them space and time to get across since the bank on the other side is steep and I never crowd critters that I catch off guard anyway.
Turns out the 10-12 foot almost-vertical bank wasn’t a big problem.
Happy Winter Solstice To All
The words “winter” and “happy” don’t mesh well for me, but the gray, calm pause between autumn’s multicolored dress and winter’s harsh whiteness is always a welcomed transition. And no crowds!
Glad you got out to paddle on such a day.
Would have loved to get out, but I had some work to do to keep the Christians and Pagan thinking about food and not their differences on Monday.
My grandson’s birthday! They should call him Sol. Maybe Shorty.
Yay for the increasing daylight!
Nice story and photos. Where is this? This doesn’t look a lot different than SW Ohio terrain.
We bring evergreens into the house to make sure the sun comes back.
Hope I can make it through the extra second of daylight today. 
Lovely wintry tree and sky images, reflected on the water. And three solstice cheers, friends - to the idea that the darkest days may be drawing away from us, and that the light will stay longer with us each day, for the next run of days.
St Joseph River, SW Michigan, about 8-10 miles from where it empties into Lake Michigan.
I’d be interested to know your favorite spots to paddle. My wife and I will probably spend a week in southern Illinois again in February. She’ll have her book and I’ll have my canoe.
We got out for a couple of hours for an urban paddle in Lansing. Laurnched on the Grand, paddled up the Red Cedar to Kruger Landing & back and then up the Grand towrds Moor’s River Park until we ran out of water at a shallow riffle.
We haven’t paddled in Southern Illinois. We liked the Current River, in Northern Missouri, when we did a 2-1/2 day canoe trip there decades ago.
Some of our favorite canoeing was in the Boundary Waters. Our favorite kayaking is on Lakes Huron and Erie and on PEI, CA.
Hope you get some good padding in if there isn’t any prohibitive ice.
We enjoyed paddling (canoeing) the Pere Marquette River, near Ludington (if memory serves me correctly).
