The Kayak and the Otter

My dad bought a secondhand tandem kayak for his seventieth birthday and announced that we were going to paddle the slough near the bay. Neither of us had ever kayaked.

We spent the first twenty minutes going in circles while he shouted "Left! No, your other left!" Then we found a rhythm, more or less, and drifted out into the quiet water between the reeds.

That's when the sea otter appeared. It floated on its back about fifteen feet away, cracking a clam on its belly, looking at us as if we were the strangest thing it had seen all week. We stopped paddling. My dad whispered, "Don't move," like we were in a nature documentary.

It stayed with us for maybe five minutes. Then it rolled over and disappeared. My dad turned around in his seat with tears in his eyes and the biggest grin. "Best birthday present I ever bought myself," he said. We've been out eleven times since.