The Sunsets on Blake Creek

Our neighbor Eric Janssen told me once that the sun setting on Blake Creek, viewed from the back of Jubilee, was the best that could be had anywhere on the Chesapeake in November, setting in to the center of Blake Creek shoals which reflected the pink of the sky. 

That may be so, I told him, but the heron rookery in the cathedral pond at the river’s edge of Mulberry, just a few paddles to the north, was where anyone could repose in peace, any time of year.  

At dusk and dawn, when the herons mostly come and go, the skies are full of little pencil herons, big blues, greys and whites. They are mostly quiet at such times, but not always when they take flight and sometimes not at night when they’re running evening errands.  Leave the windows open in summer and occasionally you’re sure some one or some thing is being strangled along the shores of Blake Creek.  These are the herons.