Noting that her fall kayaking trip was not quite what she had expected, local woman Melissa Lee concluded that the natural elements she had set out to admire last weekend ultimately left her “relatively underwhelmed.”
Lee, who had been planning to kayak down the Huron river to observe the leaves changing color, noted that the random and unforeseeable configurations of the natural world were ultimately more bothersome than breathtaking.
“Everything was really beautiful, just not quite as beautiful as I had imagined it would be,” Lee said of the pristine, 130-mile long Huron river and the magnificent oak, walnut, and maple trees that line its shore. “It would have been nice if all of the leaves had changed colors at once, but some trees hadn’t even changed yet and some had already lost all of their leaves. It wasn’t really what I had in mind.”
Lee reported that she had prepared for such disappointments as cold or cloudy weather, but that she had not prepared for the general sense of disappointment she experienced as she floated past thousands of “pretty bare” trees, ferns, and saplings.
“It was a nice day. The sun was out for a while and stuff, but the river itself was just so shallow and still,” said Lee of the hundreds-of-years old, naturally occurring waterway that facilitates the flow of millions of gallons of water through 24 distinct tributaries daily. “We had to keep pushing ourselves along, which really took away from the whole experience.”
At press time, Lee was reconsidering her plans to visit the Rocky Mountains for spring break in favor of going to Mardi Gras.
