Nature

This weekend I ventured far from the realm of pop culture into actual nature. Later this month, my friend D. and I are going on a canoeing & camping trip in the Boundary Waters in northern Minnesota. After about the hundredth person asked us if we had ever canoed, we started to doubt our operating philosophy, which had been: "If small children can do it, we probably can too." So we decided we should learn to canoe.

To that end, we went on Sunday with a couple of friends, both experienced canoers, to Mason Neck State Park. Wow, this place was beautiful; I could not believe that we were only 20 miles from DC. The park is located on a bay off of the Potomac River, and you can canoe a short distance to a marshy area called Kane's Creek. We saw bald eagles, ospreys, and blue herons, and all sorts of butterflies and dragonflies. I also saw a gigantic frog (roughly 6" in diameter). I highly recommend it, but maybe not on a day when the high is 95 degrees.