Okay,
I know I am up way too late. I know I shouldn't be on the Greenbelt after dark. I know that I shouldn't be drinking beer next to the river, especially not from a glass bottle. I also know that chillin' in the house on such a beautiful night is not such a kick ass idea, so I went outside to check things out.
The mere act of opening the back gate at night is a violation of law. While our property line extends well north of the Greenbelt, the easement which allows that path to cross our land takes precedence I guess. Either way, opening the gate puts one on the Greenbelt, so doing it at night is unlawful. I guess this was unimportant to me.
I ditched the house via the back door, walked east on the Greenbelt, took the turn to the north, and ventured down the dirt path which leads to a small beach near the river. Chilled there for a while checking out the reflection of a star ( I can't figure out which one right now, it's the brightest one to the left of the moon and up about one degree at 2:15 on today's date as viewed from Garden City) on the water while listening to the night birds and decided to walk out on the peninsula which forms the Mystic Cove on the river after which our neighborhood is named. This involved wandering back up the path, and following the Greenbelt further. I did that, until I came to the turn near the storage facility where you have to hop up on the retaining wall to avoid the puddle caused by the flooding when the river is flooded. Right when I passed that spot on the corner nearer Veteran's I heard the great ruckus caused by something sizable going into the river. Keep in mid that despite this happening less than 300 meters from my house that this is new territory for me. I know we don't have big reptiles around here, and I now that a person wouldn't choose to ditch into the water at night just because some honkey holding an IPA came walking by, but still, I turned and quick stepped back to our place.
I'm not sure that whatever splashed into the water upon my arrival on scene had malintentions toward me, but holy crud is it scary to hear something which sounds like it masses around 70 kilos hitting the water at two in the morning.
Usually I would have ignored it and continued on my journey, but the cove is between where I was and where I wanted to be. That means whatever it was that I frightened would either surface back where it was, or where I was going. Where I was going has two safe avenues of escape currently known to me, back along the islet (peninsula?) or through the water toward the beach where I had been initially. Crossing through the water in the daytime is not super easy as the rocks along the bottom are mossy, wet, and subsequently, quite slick. There is also that the largish animal which startled me was apparently amphibious. Going back across the land would be fraught with danger from branches, roots, and the possibility of the presence of whatever it was which made all the noise in the first place. So what did I do? I wimped out. I came back home and had a cigarette on the back porch and then came in and keyed this up.
Being funemployed and living in a new place runs the gamut of emotions in a number of different circumstances. I think I'm going to make another attempt at the jetty now, maybe I'll post blurry cell phone pics later.
