Still Water at the Top of the World

The Fenwater Marsh birdwatching tower stands on timber stilts above a sea of reed and mist. You climbed up at dusk to catch the harrier roost — and now the light is going gold, the frogs have started up below, and you realize you left your field notebook on the railing of the lower platform when you stopped to glass a godwit. Up here with you: a rusted bolt-lid bench locker, a spotting scope on a tripod, the tower's resident eccentric — old Gideon Marsh, who has not moved from his folding chair in three hours — and, somewhere in the reeds below, the soft presence of everything you came to see.