Where do I belong? Where do I feel most at peace? Home or traveling, either is good. Paddling a canoe on local lakes or rivers or on a wilderness trip is the best feeling there is, especially slicing through perfectly calm water with the sky and clouds reflected there, as if one is paddling through the sky. Our canoe is a Mad River Malecite, and it's perfect for us, with me in the stern and my bow paddler, my beloved wife, up in front. But if not our own, then an outrigger canoe in Hawaii, or a kayak in the Yukon, a rented canoe in Alaska... these, too, have provided opportunities for fun and for moose and loons and so much beauty. Mangrove swamps in Florida, lakes in the Adirondaks and Great Smokies, the Snake River in front of the Tetons, rivers in Michigan ... it's all good, but the Canadian Shield of the Boundary Waters and Ontario has always been the special place; now I add another place of my heart: Hawai'i, and especially the Garden Isle of Kaua'i.

Oh, and don't forget to see the sets of the mountains and our own garden, too, and the flowers in the Hawai'i sets. Where would we be without the beauty and wonder of God's creation around us everywhere?

View my photos on flickriver.