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Excursion We rowed up a long creek with a sugar planter headstrong & gritty as my younger self. At Jupiter Inlet we were taken by darkness premature and then a wind that struck us like boards & kept up hard, building waves that swept us over marshy stuff here considered land and in their troughs slammed us down on mud with such force we stuck & were swamped by the next crest. We alternately shoved at the slippery hull & clung to it as a wave roared by, & shoved again & scrambled in & bailed. And again, ten or a dozen rounds. —Then air suddenly calm as a cave & the waves expiring in minutes as they must in thin water. We felt our way about with oars and tied up to a wet key which is nothing but a fence of trees around water. At dawn we see ourselves a half mile from an island worthy of the name, though small. For heat & fun we fire it, watch the damp reeds explode into dozens of marsh rabbits scattering & swimming as we count our strokes away. 43 ...

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