black trees

"Each marked buoy passed like a minute hand making its way across the face of a schoolroom clock. The time, the date, all the measures of normal life were stripped of meaning. But just when boredom threatened to overwhelm the senses, the river would offer up some bit of unimpeachable beauty. Bald eagles circled overhead and landed in snags to watch us with wide yellow eyes. Deer startled from the shore, crashed into the understory, white tails flashing. Opalescent sunsets silhouetted herons at dusk. The great birds paced their own glassy reflections before pulling up like brushstrokes to stand in the shallows of the far shore."
--Matthew Power, excerpt from "Mississippi Drift: River Vagrants in the Age of Wal-Mart", Harper's, March 2008.