There! I’ve entered a new photography contest. It’s been awhile, not since hoping for a spot in the annual Minnesota State Fair arts sweepstakes a few years ago. Frankly, I’m holding on to as much hope for this one as I did for that one. These affairs are rather subjective, and in this case, was the sponsors looking for artistic takes of nature or images that honor the overall beauty and significance of the Refuge?

I went with the latter, dismissing a couple of the more artistic possibilities. This is a revered place, home of huge monolithic outcrops released by the Glacial River Warren some 10,000 years ago. The goal here is for safe passage for waterfowl, yet it also is a summer harbor for prairie birds with very little habitat beyond the Refuge borders. Meadowlarks, Bob-o-Links, Nighthawks and the like find as much refuge here as the shorebirds, ducks and geese.

So there are the feathered species and the outcrops, rare ball cactus and countless forbs rarely seen outside of this beautiful Refuge. This paradise draws photographers like Rob Rakow, Don Sherman, Tom Watson, Jim Foster and any number of outsiders hoisting a cell phone or camera. For all these reasons. It’s an honor to be apart of this vast fraternity and the hope they will have also entered the contest. 

Jointly sponsored by the Lac qui Parle County SWCD and the Big Stone National Wildlife Refuge, this one featured “my home” NWR, just 11 miles from here. Dozens of trips are made through the Refuge every month when the gate is open, and it is only closed when snow blocks the auto tour. I love the Refuge, for all the reasons mentioned above. The contest was my small way of supporting friends who work in both places. Besides, I was content to come home from meetings in the Cities to scour through the couple thousand images from the Refuge for the contest. I had some in mind and just had to find them and make a choice.

Then I re-read the rules and realized that the main criteria was that the photographs had to be taken within a one week period that ended Saturday night. Those old files weren’t eligible. This meant having to download all the images I’d taken at three state parks on the eastern side of the state, along with a few dozen from the Crex Meadows Wildlife Area in Wisconsin, from the week before to clear space on my camera card. That chore was finished mid-afternoon on Friday.

With the reformatted card and a charged battery I was then off to the Refuge in search of imagery for the three basic categories: water, land and sky. Sky, it turned out, was useless because of the dense gray featureless clouds. My initial trip through the auto tour didn’t offer much that first afternoon, although two of what I call “photographic poetry” images had my attention. One was an “arty” take of an autumn-blessed tree through a barely visible “screen” of a bushy prairie plant, purposely softened with a quite short depth of field. The other was a cool image of both floating and sunken leaves in a stretch of the Minnesota River. I needed more.

So before the Saturday morning sunrise I ventured to the far west border of the Refuge where I had an overlook of the entire Refuge. A few years ago this was where I captured a nice image of ambient sunset colors painting the clouds over the Refuge prairie, pools and wetlands. This was among the images being considered before re-reading the rules.

So the wait began, and to no avail for the clouds were much too dense for the sun to break through. It was back into the truck to head to the opposite side along Highway 75 and the dike overlook of the East pool where just before the Meander in early October I captured some nice silhouettes of Great Blue Herons stalking the shallows along the rocky shores. Nope, they weren’t there. 

It was off toward Odessa, venturing off into the first turn where a Great White Egret captured my eye as it patiently stalked down the length of a fallen tree. This would be my choice for the “water” category, for the lighting was perfect to emphasize the surrounding autumn foliage, and the composition was there for the taking. One of those moments of being in the right spot at the right time!

From there it was back to the Auto Drive. In all, I wouldn’t leave the Refuge until mid-afternoon, walking the trails, climbing those broad-shoulder outcrops and venturing down various mowed paths. 

A deer, the second one I’ve ever seen in all my times in the Refuge, and I spent numerous moments staring one another down. Hikes were made through the brush and prairie plants for other images along the river and the pools, and eventually included a nearly mile-long walk to an outcrop I’ve always intended to visit. It was recently “revealed” as numerous piles of buckthorn and scrub trees awaited a match all around the circumference of the husky granite. There wasn’t a bad view from the outcrop. Not one. There I sat for nearly an hour, listening, watching crows and a developing murmuration ply the skies, just breathing in a magnificent, 360 degree view of the Refuge. 

It actually doesn’t matter who has the chosen images, and if it isn’t one of mine it won’t matter for I’m already a winner for venturing into both familiar places and areas of the Refuge I’d not visited … all on an idyllic autumn day, capturing what images I could in the midst of the many 10,000 year old geological wonders within the park. An unexpected bonus was being introduced to a new fishing spot by a fellow in a pickup with South Dakota license plates. So, yes, I’m already blessed, and there is nothing wrong with that.