Today’s kayaking trip was to Cochiti Canyon. We paddled a fair ways up the Rio Grande despite strong currents.

The river has forged a few new channels, and it is always a delight and adventure to experience the vastness, solitude, and stillness. The usual Great Blue herons, ravens, turkey vultures, red-wing blackbirds, phoebes, and flycatchers accompanied us, but the best sighting was a young beaver swimming across the river very near our boats on the way back.

It is still a source of awe and wonder to see that Cochiti Canyon is completely filled with mud and sand. Five seasons ago we were able to paddle all the way up. And the deniers still claim that climate change is a fiction of the liberal imagination!