Poet Mary Oliver penned this on the beauty and joy of Trout Lillies claiming they’re a “gift that can’t be broken.”  Often those “gifts” are hidden as if a Mother Nature was intent on hiding something special for Christmas. Such were my thoughts as we sauntered down the boardwalk steps toward Hidden Falls at Nerstrand-Big Woods State Park in search of this rare gift. It was a promise that seemed bleak when we passed two older women who on their way back up the hilly path. 

After greetings were shared, along with some good wishes for the one who admitted she was making her first state park adventure since a hip replacement surgery, she asked, “So what are you photographing?”

“Hopefully some Trout Lillies,” I said. 

“Oh, my! You’re much too late! They’re long gone,” she said rather adamantly.

What discouraging news, for our heading to the park on this late Sunday afternoon was in search of the delicate and beautiful native wildflowers sequestered within a mere three county area at the iceless lip of the Driftless. Nerstrand-Big Woods is one of the few remaining public locations. Officially, they’re endemic to the Cannon River and North Fork Zumbro River watersheds in Rice, Goodhue and the extreme northern edge of Steele County. We were where we needed to be.

This unexpected photo journey was part of satisfying my need of venturing into nature, a feeling that has been clawing at me for awhile. We were in the Cities for the artist’s reception of my “Haunted by Waters” exhibit at the Kouba Gallery located on the sacred grounds of the Izaak Walton League on the bluff overlooking the Minnesota River. This is about an hour north of the Nerstrand-Big Woods. Yet, even before leaving home my sights were set on the Sherburne NWR for Sandhill Cranes. Sherburne is my “Mall of America”, and if Trout Lillies could be added to our weekend foray, the gifts would be astounding.

We left Listening Stones Farm early Saturday morning for the three plus hour trip to Sherburne and made it just in time for a quick and picturesque picnic lunch beneath the canopy of towering oaks. We were then off into the motor trail, a “timeless” meander that makes one wonder about the limited vision of others as we were seemingly constantly being passed by other cars speeding by. Were they oblivious to the colorful yellowish Hoary Puccoons and early blooms of deep blue Lupines, or the nesting swans and hopeful sightings of the nearly perfectly camouflaged Sandhill Cranes? 

Admittedly, we were moving rather slow, fighting our initial disappointment of being past the halfway point without a single crane sighting. About then we spied a pair feeding near a far distant wetland. Too distant for a workable photograph. Then, suddenly, one flew across the road right in front of us and was caught mid-frame! Rejoice! Seconds later, its mate followed. Another smile. After that the crane sightings increased significantly, particularly on the due south straightaway of the motor trail where dozens were found feeding in a swampy prairie meadow. One even played “king of the hill” by standing erect on a muskrat lodge. 

At one point, though, after photographing numerous prairie-based wild flowers, I mentioned it was too bad we hadn’t seen any Trout Lillies. An instant Googling of its natural history indicated we were far from their natural habitat yet within the limited time frame of their blooming. A temptation had been launched. What could be better than capturing Sandhills and rare Trout Lillies along with being honored for an exhibit of my water images?

It wasn’t until a lull in our artist’s reception that I suggested to Roberta that we venture to Nerstrand-Big Woods. The park was only an hour south, although it was in the opposite direction of home. Our’s would be a long and late trip home. She was game especially since she had often camped at the park with her late husband, Harland, whose disabilities prevented them from actually visiting Hidden Falls. Now she could catch the falls, and me hopefully, the Trout Lillies!

That was where we were when we encountered the two women and their dismal warning. Strangely enough, moments after our passing and further along the trail my eye caught some strange looking elongated white triangles clustered within the plant canopy. As I was focusing my lens Roberta asked, “Are those your Trout Lillies? Look underneath them.” Sure enough, for below those triangles were the characteristic yellowish, white tendrils. Nirvana!

So indeed, we were not too late. A sense of relief eased over me, for despite the woman’s forecast, a friend, Ted Suss, whose farm is nearby, had told us after we’d decided to venture to Nerstrand-Big Woods that there were “Trout Lillies everywhere.” Up to this point, though, we had been “skunked.” No, they were no longer everywhere, so the two women had almost been correct, for the plants were near the end of their blooming cycle. Yet, what joy. What a gift! 

And, Hidden Falls was not disappointing despite the small water stream. When we first arrived a young teenage couple sat quietly and lovingly, arms and emotions entangled, watching and listening to the cascading falls in a silent euphoric state of first love — that overwhelming feelings they’ll likely not experience again. As we two couples shared a splendid and reverent moment, another couple, about half our age and twice the age of the teenagers, burst from the trail with their teenage son. They suddenly stripped to their skivvies and leapt into the chilly waters, laughing and splashing as if they were children. Though the quiet was lost, the teenager lovers giggled, as did we. Their’s was a celebration within a moment of life … as was ours and the loving teenagers. 

Eventually we turned to head back toward the parking lot, stopping when we reached the small patch of lingering Trout Lillies. Perhaps I broke a park rule by stepping across a rope barrier to kneel into the greenery for a closer, low angled image of Oliver’s delicate gift. 

It was an image that sealed a treasured weekend; Roberta finally seeing her long desired view of Hidden Falls, and me with my varied moments of nature. Those images of Sandhill Cranes and Trout Lillies added greatly to my celebration of personal joy with the exhibit; some hopefully expected, another unintentionally gathered — all gifts that will keep on giving!

There was a lull in the middle of the afternoon, moments between a Hands Off Rally and an Easter dinner with my son, on this the Saturday before Earth Day. Easter is a big thing for Jake; Earth Day for me. 

First, his story: Years ago when living in a different group home he connected deeply with his primary caregiver who even on her Sunday’s off would come to take him to church. This beautiful Hispanic woman became a cross between a second mother, buddy and caregiver. It wasn’t long after his mother and my wife had died. She also made sure he was registered to attend a summer Christian camp within an hour’s drive of the group home.

Unfortunately, as happens with group homes, she eventually decided to move on. Yet her influence was so deep that years later church holidays and the camp continue to be his heartfelt necessities. He tolerates his father, who is more spiritual than religious. Where he finds peace within the folds of a saintly robe, mine come with nature. 

So on this Saturday afternoon with a window of time before our dinner, my thoughts, as spiritual as they were, was to head to nearby Sibley State Park where I might amble through the dense, hilly woodlands in search of some early spring blooms of Hepatica and other woodland fauna. With the ongoing political turmoil we’re facing my traipsing through the prairies and woodlands have suffered greatly of late along with my spirituality. Sometimes I return home with few if any images, and most with little artistic effort. And still with a cluttered mind. 

Before realizing it I had lost track of my bearings and was quite a ways north of the Sibley turnoff. Pulling off to the shoulder of US 9 to gather my thoughts, and to gauge a possible time frame, my decision was to head to the Lake Johanna Esker some 20 minutes deeper into the hills and woodlands of the moraine where a fine prairie “wilderness” awaited, if you can describe a grassland as such. This Nature Conservancy is home to perhaps the most prolific Prairie Smoke patches I’ve ever witnessed. Prairie Smoke and Pussytoes, one a brilliant pink, the other offering a gleaming contrast of white.

Although mid-April meant I’d likely miss both, it was worth a look. After arriving I sat for several moments to gaze at the distant esker, a tall narrow glacial stream bed towering over the adjacent prairie and now buried beneath layers of till, dormant grasses and gangly oak trees. That old stream bed is quite visible, unlike in the geological age when it lay buried beneath an ice sheet perhaps a mile straight up from where I was parked.

Eventually I grabbed my camera with a multipurpose zoom lens and ambled through the gate to follow a motorized trail angling toward the top of the nearest rise where typically hundreds Prairie Smoke plants would be blooming. Small leaves barely the size of a fingernail hugged the ground. Then, off to my left and down the rise a bit, my eye caught a hint of pink, and there it was, small and bowing gently toward the earth, a small Prairie Smoke blossom. Instantly I was onto my stomach focusing the lens. Nature now ruled. All of that confusion and nightmarish thought was suddenly gone. 

After grabbing a few images, I rolled over to sit in the meadow, looking toward the esker, remembering a moment years ago while sitting here a pair of Sandhill Cranes flew over looking thoroughly prehistoric. Now in a distant wetland, a swan floated on the stilled surface, and high above a small pod of  pelicans soared across a single cloud. Nature revived. With each breath my mind eased, little by little. Scents of the meadow and whiffs of spring meshed with the smell of earth. My eyes resettled on the poetry of the lone Prairie Smoke blossom, folded neatly into a perfect poem. 

Moments after I stood and regained my balance, it was off through a shallow valley to the distant hill where perhaps I might find some Pasque Flowers, one of our first of the floral seasons. Finding none, I then ambled toward the massive mound of the esker where dormant prairie grasses and oak trees failed to hide the geological relic.

In time, and after a quick turn through Sibley amd dinner with Jake, I made a stop on the way home on a hill overlooking the Big Stone National Wildlife Refuge where I’ve often visited for Pasques, and once again was rewarded. Now fully mature from when I was here just a week before, the blossoms begged for portraits, and I accommodated, once again lying on the ground on the hillside, working the aperture and shutter speeds, playing with the light, doing what one needs to do when making images of nature. Where before the blossoms seem to shrink from sight, they were now open and bold, lifting blueish petals toward the blue sky and drifting clouds.

It was a good day, recharging the soul while celebrating earth … just days before the official Earth Day celebration. 

It’s a day offering many memories, from that first one at an auditorium in Denver while working for the Post, sitting with a friend as speakers stood before a nearly empty cavernous room and wondering if the celebration would actually catch on. That people would understand and pay attention to our lonely planet. A couple of years later I met and interviewed Earth Day founder Sen. Gaylord Nelson at a convention in Laramie, WY. Many years and Earth Day celebrations have since past, including when my Art of Erosion exhibit would be part of a Smithsonian water presentation at Prairie Woods Environmental Learning Center just a few miles from Sibley,. 

And on this Saturday came the enjoyment of some special moments defying the man and his political henchmen  who seems intent on destroying it all. Inspite of that chaos this was what I had been missing, that comforting peace that encourages my spirituality: peace sparked by a lone Prairie Smoke blossom, so colorful, so delicate, bowing poetically as if it in itself was offering a blessing to earth, caressing the prairie with such blissful grace. That was an offered poem I shall never forget.

At first glance the coffee-colored pavement we had entered after a late afternoon of driving through Bryce Canyon National Park seemed just what we needed. A straight shot up to I-70 and our hope of entering our third National Park in two days. Then we crossed the first cattle guard, which brought a smile and comment from Roberta. A mile or so later we crossed another, and another. One cattle guard after another and not one sighting of a beef animal. Not one.

We were in a corner of the Great American Desert. If not for the distant mountains, bluish with a hint of reddish hue, we could have as well been in the Australian outback. Reddish soil. Roundish scrub as far as one could see. If a kangaroo had suddenly hopped into view I wouldn’t have been surprised. It’s a lonely stretch of a long, straight highway that has apparently grasped different colloquial names, yet only one appeased me: the Black River Canyon Road. 

As dusk began to settle in around us we entered gentle switchbacks into a valley …  into the actual Black River Canyon! Two colorful Gambel’s quail crept along the foliage. Long-tailed Magpies did near poetic air sprints across the highway. Mule deer grazed along the roadside, and a pair of antelope barely moved as we sped by.

Indeed, it wasn’t until we returned home that we finally realized that the Black River Canyon Road had been a wrong turn! That would have been our second of a very long travel day that had begun in Las Vegas earlier that morning. 

Our first was discovered at the trail’s end of Zion National Park hours earlier. We had stopped at a ranger’s station for a bathroom and sandwich break when I began comparing place names we had passed with a huge map of Zion. My goal had been to follow the Virgin River up to the Narrows, where Roberta had already firmly stated she had no interest in investing in a hike. Me? I was holding onto a final decision.

Imagine my surprise when I realized that after leaving the main park entrance we had veered off toward the eastern entrance of the park and was nowhere near the Virgin River watershed. Not that it wasn’t breathtakingly beautiful, for it was. Not that we would have eventually been on this very road, for this was the route we needed to traverse toward Bryce Canyon National Park.

Apparently our “confusion” happened at Canyon Junction. Had we been more aware we would have immediately realized the challenging switchbacks were on the Zion Mt. Carmel Highway. Perhaps in time we can make it back to Zion, and if so, make the hike up the Virgin River into the Narrows. Yet, two wrong turns in a day? 

Back to Bryce, which would have been a photographer’s joy early in the morning. Back when we realized our wrong turn at Zion we also noticed radically worn rear tires. Treadless tires! So our drive from Zion to Bryce was heart thumping, for we had only seen a single tire shop in a small village. Also, the crowds and overflow parking at Zion was nowhere near what we were seeing. The tire guy in a small village was hopeful we could make it to Tropic, Utah, where he said we would find an actual tire shop. We needed both rear tires, which was before the Tropic tire guy pointed to an outward appearing appendage protruding from one of the front tires. 

“This one is the bad news,” he said. “This tire is actually more dangerous than your rear tires.” We now have four black rubber souvenirs from our trip.

On that Black River Canyon Road we felt suddenly secure. So off we went on the loop toward Torrey and what would be our third park in two days, with an afternoon date with the Arches National Park. It was in Torrey just before the evening news that we ran into our first of two wonderful curry joints, and this one actually served curry pizzas … basically across the highway from a motel where we awakened the owner to rent a room once we convinced him we weren’t traveling with Joe Pye, our ever hopeful “whatever blood” rescue.

Early the next morning after a thoroughly regrettable breakfast we were off to Capitol Reef with its cool abandoned orchards and petroglyphs, not to mention more red sandstone. 

Oh, about that second missed turn? This wasn’t discovered until we were home and scrolling across Facebook when a meme appeared describing one of the ten most beautiful highway trips in the world. Get this: not just in the States, but the world, a highway traversing land between Tropic and Torrey. The “All American Road,” 124 miles of canyonland bliss.

Here is a published poem of explanation: “The way the road connects with the land, feels somehow a part of the landscape, embedded in the slickrock, even though it was once an intrusion into the space. Like the way a lightning strike can ignite a fire in a forest and sweep out gnarly, dense undergrowth competing for sunlight, there is a period of adaptation and recovery. It virtually becomes part of the ecosystem.”

So, within just a few hours our two wrong turns took us away from the Virgin River Valley at Zion and the All American Road between national parks in the Utah desert. Yet, you don’t know what you missed until you realize in the end it made absolutely no difference; that even “wrong turns” can be so exceptionally beautiful.

Being in NOLA for Fat Tuesday hadn’t crossed our minds. Celebrating a small Mardi Gras  in a small coffee house with fine musicians and some Cajun fare was on the mind, however … until the blizzard arrived. 

For much of the afternoon we held onto hope. For a moment or two earlier in the day we considered going to a protest at the office of U.S. representative before the concert, until the blizzard arrived.

After a morning Zoom meeting much of the rest of the day was spent completing a writing assignment. Another piece I had hoped to have finished still awaits in note form. Between the assignments I decided to take Joe Pye for a hike through the prairie. Then the blizzard hit.

My ever hopeful hound didn’t seem bothered at first, for he’s always gungho about our prairie hikes. It seemed the northern loop might be a bit longer than the south one and just the break necessary to clear the mind. My camera was tucked beneath my arm. Then the blizzard raged. Huge fluffy balls of snow carried by a harsh wind forced snow between my eyes and glasses. Despite being dressed for it, the cold knifed through.

Straight from the north, and we were walking right into the blast. A couple of times I stopped, pulled off the mittens to focus my camera. Not being a “point and shoot” type of photographer, this meant working the aperture and the speed in an attempt to fully capture the moment, the blizzard. Within seconds my fingers felt the wrath of the wind and snow, so the maneuvering was accomplished as rapidly as possible, an image or two captured, and the mittens replaced as rapidly as possible.

The blizzard was more than I had bargained for, so we cut a path through the seedless, wind-bent bluestem toward the woodland. Near the cover of trees we gained the protection we were aiming for. Just inside the canopy was my wood perch. A small bench of cut logs. The afternoon before, in near 50 degree temperatures, I had sat on the perch created by an old friend who back after we had purchased the land had come to clear a path through the grove. Now weathered and cracked, his artwork holds true, and his path is one we still work to keep cleared through the summer, and the one Joe Pye and I would traverse to escape the blizzard.

For several moments I stood looking at Kurt’s little bench, where I had sat a day before with my back against the broken tree to meditate. Nowadays this meditation has a name. Forest bathing, where slow, deep breaths are taken in deeply then released through your arms and legs before being drawn back in, creating a circle of inner peace. 

As you breathe, you check your various senses. What do you see? Ah, the trees, many of them quite old and bent if not broken. Some that had been sawn and now have shoots reaching upwards. Not one or two, but a half dozen or more defying death. Basswood, perhaps. To the north, twin trunks of an old and dominate cottonwood stands as a sentinel along the edge between the woody grove and the northern prairie. It and the adjacent basswood and weedy buckthorn are common hosts to warblers and cedar waxwings, blue jays and sparrows of a woodland-based summer. Now, despite the calmness and quiet of this archway between winter and spring, there are no birds. No chatter. Only a stillness beneath the hum of wind.

Beyond the edge and into the prairie grasses, the wind roars through the grasses and tickles the top of the canopy. Outside of the edge of the trees, just past Kurt’s perch, wind-driven snow nearly rolls in waves across the landscape. The fence row trees separating this half section from the neighbor’s field a mile to the east is lost in the whiteout.

So we move along, Joe Pye and I. He continuously lifts his snout to capture scents that escape me. That is one of the senses you attempt to awaken in your forest bathing meditation. No scents of interest came to this  inadequate human.

We edged along up the slight rise though the stretched arm width of this long cut and worn path I had last cleared in the late autumn. After reaching the apex of the rise, the path led us down toward the hen house and driveway. An expanse of a park-like opening free of invasive buckthorn and weedy burdock was starting to collect a thin carpet of snow, what little could drift through the canopy. Beyond the grove, to the south and west, distant trees were nearly impossible to see through the rolling haze of snow. 

When we reached the end of the wooded path, we then headed to the warmth of the kitchen. Inside, through the beautifully wide window we placed here instead of the twin “double-hungs,” the wind driven snow coursed through the adjacent stalk field, rolling, wind-driven blasts of snow much like the waves on the shores of Lake Superior. Joe Pye lapped his water as warmness filled the hearth, and a calmness settled the soul. Outside the blizzard of March roared mightily, while inside, warmness prevailed. 

Here we are fresh into a new year, and I am already having old thoughts, those that bring me back to where I was exactly one year ago. All of which began a few years before that with an ad on Facebook featuring a journal of Minnesota’s then 65 state parks. Although many had been visited over the years, there was neither a file of photographs nor a journal consisting of my thoughts of the individual parks.

Once the book arrived a look at the journaling aspects showed a facing page offering basically an itinerary and planning guide followed by a log of the who, what and whens of the visit on the second page. Not being a list maker, this was way too detailed for my tastes, so, I created my own little manner of journaling that now includes an opening page of photographs followed by my actual journaling. Black ink to the rescue! “Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart,” cautioned William Wordsworth. I can’t do that with a list.

Shortly after receiving the book I pasted my first image … one of my late wife, Sharon Yedo White, sitting on a log at the then new Afton State Park with our two sons along with our then exchange student, Fredrik Croona from Sweden. My own image was reflected in a mirror she was holding. It was taken around 1985 or so. Our first home in Minnesota was about a mile south of the southern border of the park, on a bluff overlooking the confluence of the St. Croix and Kinnickinnic Rivers. That was perhaps our most blissful summer together before the stresses of life snagged us … starting a family along with a corporate business life in magazines and an ad agency.

Ah, yes, the makings of a journal. A photograph plus a facing page containing my written thoughts. I promised to fill the rest of the photographic page with images from the park, which was accomplished this past October.

By November of 2024 some 38 state parks had been visited and journaled, although one of my favorites where we spent so much time camping and fishing both as a couple and later with many foreign exchange students, the Upper Sioux Agency State Park, was decommissioned and the land returned to the Dakota Nation. While that was likely an overdue move by the State, it’s a place that holds many fine memories as well as beautiful camping nooks for escaping the ills of society. Yes, it’s journaled.

Just inside the journal is a state map noting the location of each state park, and by now, some three years after receiving the journal most of the state parks in the southern half of the state, from the tip of the Driftless along the Mississippi River and Iowa Border up to the Canadian Border, have been visited, photographed and journaled. Indeed, last September after our aborted effort to do the Lake Superior Circle Tour, we decided to start at Grand Portage State Park at the Canadian border and visit all of the State Parks along the Superior “coast.” A redemption, if you will. Something to sooth our raw souls (yes, thoughts that were journaled!).

Our first day went well, and the second started wonderfully with a short hike into the falls at Cascade River SP that was breathtakingly beautifully. The park was a “water baby’s” dream offering waves of photographic poetry. Next was Temperance River SP where I choose to take a rock stairwell rather than a paved path and lost my balance on a deeper than expected step. Down I went, crushing my camera and lens beneath my body in a hard fall. Both were ruined, which has since led to quite a technological adventure, and one that is quite challenging for a man my age.

After much thought and concern, the decision was made to continue with my art. I wasn’t ready to quit even as I turned 81. Since my crushed Nikon had been discontinued I have since “graduated” into a whole new realm of technology. My old photo processing software wouldn’t handle the new imagery, and then came the reality that the printer I’d used for the past several years was obsolete. Epson had discontinued producing the specified ink cartridges …. meaning a new printer. More technology, and one I’m still dealing with. My two main software programs still operating on my old iMac desktop were long obsolete although still usable with the older equipment. New camera. New software. New printer. More new technology. New tricks for an old mind.

Yet, there’s the state park journal along with my quest to continue my form of “Impressionistic Prairie Art.” No, I wasn’t ready to quit — not my art nor my journal, not when I only 26 state parks short of completing my goal!

This past year we actually visited 17 parks. This came after a count when I sort of felt like I’d short changed myself. This doesn’t include our home park, Big Stone Lake SP with its distant Bonanza Educational Center. Both that and the Meadowbrook section are visited numerous times each month.

So now I’m where I was a year ago in looking over my journaling and the parks previously visited and scheming forthcoming trips. Minnesota is blessed with some of the most beautiful and interesting state parks in the nation, and hopefully if my health and energy continues we’ll make a dent in the 26. Typically we’ll park the camper at one state park and visit any that are close by, Roberta holds Joe Pye on a leash while I search for imagery, sauntering down a narrow wooded trail or seeking an angle of a beautiful river, all while seeking some photographic “poetry.”

Way back when, nearly 60 years ago, I entered the Fourth Estate, otherwise known as professional journalism. About this time of year the editors, perhaps in need of filling space with the shrinking of the newsy tidbits that seemed to ebb with the holiday season, would ask us to select our favorite stories or photographs they would then feature in the paper.

Long retired from the grind of my former profession, about a dozen years ago I began to fully focus on the last one percent of the prairie pothole ecosystem with my camera. Since then my work has been featured in various galleries, art shows, a few magazines and here at my home studio especially during the annual Upper Minnesota River Arts Meander. For the past several years I’ve gone back to that old newspaper gig of selecting what I considered my favorite 12 images of the year.

My selection process began the day after Christmas and my selections were chosen in typical brainstorming fashion … by gleaning through my monthly files of images to place in a desktop file. At that point there were a few favorites, yet that wasn’t the point of this annual review. Later would come the judgement. I wanted a dozen, but another five were so close that I found myself continually adding and subtracting … so here are my 12 plus a few others, for whatever it’s worth. By the way, thanks for your continued engagement and support of my work.

Here are the ones that were close, so my apologies …

Thanks for hanging in there with me. And, here’s to a healthy, peaceful and engaging New Year!

For the past several years I’ve given myself one assignment. Just one. That I will search for a hopefully representative image that speaks of the Winter Solstice. Some years it is nip and tuck as I await a “true” representative image that speaks of the day and moment, one that typically that involves light and color — two of the major elements of artistic expression.

A few times I’ve had to wait through most of the day for such a moment to be revealed, for I want the image to feel special. Something meaningful. Something I hope happens before sunset on this, the shortest day of the year.

This quest began some 30 years ago when I was running a small country weekly newspaper here in the prairie. I was in need of a nice image for the top fold of the front page, and yes, I realized that on that particular Tuesday afternoon that it was the Winter Solstice. Initially this was simply an excuse to find a hook for the paper being published just ahead of  Christmas and I wasn’t buying into using another Santa picture. I was in pursuit of a prairie image within the moment.

A frigid haze softened the brutal temperature as I looked across Hawk Creek while eating a sandwich, this just a couple of hours before we would send the paper to the printers. And there it was right in front of me (of all places!). With my camera in hand I traipsed through my little backyard prairie garden to the bank of the Hawk to take a picture of a neighboring farmstead nestled within the frozen haze, the sun barely poking through the dense gloom. 

From that point forward I’ve continued to search for an interesting and hopefully  meaningful Winter Solstice image. My one assignment! A year or two later it happened en route to the Post Office when a flock of pigeons burst from the town’s grain elevator to fly toward one of those rainbow-ish arcs of a sundog. One year it came down to the last light, one of those “rainbow skies,” as a friend once labeled those prairie horizons encroaching on the blue hour. Every year it seems something different reveals itself.

This, I’ll readily admit, is one of the joys of winter ranking close photographically with whims of a first hoarfrost or snowfall. Yet, I find the Solstice far more important and that it falls on a designated day. As far as the Summer Solstice goes, it’s sort of been more of a “blah” sort of feeling, for the narrowing of light hasn’t held the same flow of energy for me  as having longer days and ever more sunlight. Call it my inner pagan, if you desire.

I didn’t know what to expect this year, and truthfully I’ve been fighting a funk since the election. It’s not so much that my candidate lost, but rather who she lost to. I fear deeply for our country, for our form of government, and on a more personal level, for the continued  help necessary for my son with disabilities to have a meaningful life.

Since the election I’ve searched for some artistic revelation, For the first few days I found myself searching the prairie potholes around here for calm waters. Something psychologically soothing. On many days I found them, yet I couldn’t sit and write feelings I felt like sharing. Indeed, this is the first piece I’ve published since then.

A revelation is seemingly a moment of unexpected magic, of having a truth revealed in some inordinate way. Would something like this happen on this year’s Winter Solstice? When I climbed into the truck mid-morning I left Listening Stones in almost a frantic search, glancing into the trees and prairie grasses, searching the frozen wetlands and the cloudy sky. There was no preconceived thoughts. I wanted whatever image to be organic. Yes, there was an interesting array of wavy clouds with the sun weaving in and out, and there was also some interesting limbs painted with fresh snow. 

My mind was sort of fixated on those clouds, and the thought that it might work over an expanse of ice, so I drifted toward the spillway dam of the East Pool of the Big Stone Wildlife Refuge. Those silken clouds, though, were due southeast and nowhere near the ice, so I drove along slowly until I found my moment … two sets of animal tracks highlighted by the sun crossing the snowy wind dunes covering the ice — tracks coming from different directions that crossed before venturing off in different directions. A natural “crossroads” within nature, the hoof edges caught by a low, southerly light.

Those tracks seemed to echo precisely my feelings of what is going on not just personally, but also politically, of how the results of the election might affect our relationships with allies, neighboring countries. and even our enemies, We are all seemingly caught in this crossroad of philosophy and doubt, of what might happen in the weeks and months ahead. 

That there was no color seemed to perfectly portray this singular moment and thought in time. 

For several long moments I stared at the tracks, of their respective paths, of how they came from different directions, then crossed before venturing poetically in different directions. My thought was  that I had somehow successfully fulfilled my quest; that my Winter Solstice assignment had been accomplished. And that I was fortunate to discover and record this fragile moment as an image.