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.

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.

We were on the way home from visiting our sixth Minnesota State Park in the past two weeks when we saw the sign pointing toward the Sherburne National Wildlife Refuge. Just a short jog off our Google-assisted path home, so why not take a chance for once again photographing some Sandhill Cranes. Yes, I’m an obsessed “crane chaser!”

So we headed a bit south and west toward the seven-mile motor loop that meanders through this haven of “Cranesville” with high hopes and a quest for a picnic lunch. Yes, our anticipation was high, for we had made the earlier decision to postpone the last state park on our planned trip, one that was relatively close to Crex Meadows just across the Wisconsin border where Sandhills are often photographed. Visiting Sherburne was a nice salve for sore feelings.

What we found was a lazy afternoon in the Refuge. Numerous swans at rest and preening in cattail hideaways. Resting cormorants in the skeletons of long dead trees sunning themselves to dryness. Kingfishers posed on woody spikes with watchful eyes. Long-beaked Green Herons poised for murder and mayhem. Beautiful wild flowers painting the adjacent prairies and glowing global teacups of white water lilies floating on the calm surfaces of the wetlands. 

And not a single sighting of a Sandhill Crane. Not one.

“Off to the grain fields and prairies north of here,” was my shared thought, for we had passed three on the trip out not too far north, and actually along the highway we had just driven from. My suspicion was that the trio was a mated couple with their fully grown colt, and they were stoic and beautiful in the small patch of prairie next to an oak grove. Had we not been in a rush we might have pulled off for a picture, so we moved along.

Was this absence another sign of our dwindling summer? The weekend before we left on this excursion to hopefully complete my personal photo journal of the Minnesota State Parks, we had delivered a print to a farmer friend who has been quite kind over the years in suggesting nature sightings on his land. Next to his farm site we photographed power lines filled with seemingly hundreds of Redwing Blackbirds that had congregated as they do before migration. That we’ve seen the small family flocks of Canadian Geese flying around Listening Stones is another sign of a waning summer, but what really caught my attention was the bright blue, starred blooms of asters in the woody fringes of the state parks. It seems so early. Too early.

But yes, we are more than halfway through August so fall is quickly approaching, and nature is opening its annual gallery of these many seasonal changes that await us.

Our wildlife loop through Sherburne was almost shocking for it was my first time in the many loops I’ve made through there over the years without seeing a single Sandhill Crane. Spring, summer or autumn we’ve always been greeted by cranes, and once it was before we even reached the welcoming signs and kiosk less than a mile past the gate. After Thanksgiving last fall we spotted hundreds in two different groups along the edges of distant wetlands. Not this time, and we scanned the distant landscapes thoroughly with the 600 mm lens.

Regardless of species, the spring hatch has now grown mature enough that the parents are offering “flying lessons” to gorge up for the upcoming migrations. We must include the Sandhill Cranes among those offering such important lessons, for before long the prairies will be winter quiet. 

Around the house the number of barn swallows has nearly tripled in the past couple of weeks, as the young seem just as adept at flying above the prairie for mosquitoes and other insects as their matured parents. A few years ago I recall sitting on the deck with a class of cold tea looking at all of the swallows perched on the clothes lines and the several perchable edges of the outbuildings. Our prairie was noisy with the loud chatter of a late morning. We had gone inside for a quick lunch and when we returned a little later there wasn’t a swallow in sight. All were all gone. And the silence was deafening. In a midday instant the migration had parted.

Sherburne was sort of like that on our drive through late last week. Yes, it was a lazy and warm afternoon. There was barely a ripple on the surfaces of the multiple wetlands, so besides the feeling of laziness it was also incredibly calm. Peaceful in a way that makes your breathing easy.

It was almost like we were intruding on sacred natural moments, viewing scenes we weren’t supposed to see. In terms of humans we were almost all alone for we saw only a couple of cars, and only one had eased around our camper and pickup. Perhaps the “regulars” already were aware that the Sandhills were off feeding away from the refuge. My guess is that if we had been there hours earlier around dawn or even later in the evening we would have seen the beautiful skeins flying in, necks and legs straight like an arrow in flight, silhouetted in a sky in the full color of a brilliant sunset. Just not then, not in an early and easy afternoon.

Perhaps the asters had given us the clue all along. I was somewhat shocked to see them already in such a mature bloom, and I suppose the shorter hours of daylight should have been previously noted … and perhaps it was by folks more astute about the constant messages sent by nature. Those blue blossoms have rarely lied. and our summer is nearing an end.

Yet I missed the poetic stalking, that unmistakable purposeful stride through tall prairie grasses; that watchful and protective eye of the tall standing male as the female and colt garner food nearby; that unique call of the wild that Aldo Leopold claimed was not the call of a mere bird, but a “trumpet in the orchestra of evolution.” Yes, that bird.

My songwriter friend, Charlie Roth, penned a beauty about this time a year ago that he called “I Don’t Want to Live in an Angry World,” a song with such a catchy chorus that even on the night he introduced it to a live audience most were singing along with his simple but catchy and timely chorus by the end. A room of harmony that maybe even surprised Charlie. The song was about politics and how he thought it was time to do away with the anger on either side of the divide and become friends again.

I found myself mentally humming his chorus as I looked up at the angry heavens the other day, of a planet that is in dire need of human hope and help. After all, we’re the ones causing this climatic turmoil. Our skies are alive with that disgusted anger. It seems the planet is not just angry but pissed, and she is letting us know from the plains of Africa to the mountains of Canada, from the deep South to the Pacific islands. We are living in an angry, climactic world.

Although we have so far escaped the dreaded tornado activity being experienced in the South, and obviously the horrendous hurricanes and typhoons of the heat-bearing oceanic regions, our skies have been burdened with layers of smoke from the uncountable fires from the Yukon to LA, and although our stormy weather has been somewhat wet and traumatic, we’ve been lucky so far. 

Still, that anger is there, above us, and the heavens aren’t shy about showing that rage. This week we’ve suddenly been bombarded with dense dark clouds bearing lightning and deep, bass thunder that has shaken our very foundations. Huge rain storms have ravaged nearby communities, and baseball sized hail pounded the crops and homes less than ten miles north of here. Nearby Granite Falls had about five inches of rain in an hour or so last Sunday. Many of our saturated farm fields have standing water in the rows of their commodity crops, and the wetlands are full. Nearby the rivers were just nearing bank-side when these latest storms cruised through.

Let’s pick a single day, say July 31, a day that began here in the western Minnesota prairie with some clinging early morning heat accompanied with crushing humidity. Normally I’ll laugh at my significant other for what she terms as scorching days of heat and humidity. Having grown up with it, and having worked in the hay fields and haylofts during those formative years, most of our summer days have been in the mid to high 80s with mild humidity — in fact, before Wednesday I spent the afternoons kneeling in the garden pulling weeds to make way for a cover crop. Yes, there was a lot of sweat pouring but there was also a nice breeze both afternoons.

Wednesday, though, was different. A humid haze hung like a dense curtain on the fringes of the horizon. Sweat came with minimal activity, like walking from the deck to the studio. Then, around 10 a.m. I stepped out of the studio to notice a huge, deep black cloud hovering just above the woodland and northern prairie. Within moments we were enveloped in darkness, as lightning and rumbling thunder rolled in along with the first rain. It was a hasty affair, lasting mere minutes as the prairie winds quickly moved it right along toward the east. Nearly an iinch fell and you could sense the pressure relaxing.

Having a photograph to make in town, I left the farm via the Lake Road, got my photograph and started back home. As I was passing the supermarket along First Avenue I noticed a pod of pelicans just above the lake, and was able to grab a couple of nice images as they turned mid-air to ease to a landing on Big Stone Lake. A moment of peace in the turbulent skies.

This early storm was merely a prelude to what occurred overhead by mid-afternoon. I actually shouted to Roberta to come and look at the overwhelming ominous cloud capturing the sky above us. Our only lightness was a thin strip of a collar between the blanketing cloud and the horizon. This dense, rollicking cloud seemed to blacken the entire prairie. 

Lightning lit deep within the rollicking layers. Lightning seems to be a prelude for all of the stormy events regardless of country or continent. It’s said that lightning is actually a neutralization between our dominate poles, equalizing the natural pressure of the atmosphere. Between the clouds and the lightning, it was both frightening and awesome to behold. But, was there any equalizing going on?

This theory was verbalized by a speaker at a Gathering Partners’ annual gathering of the Minnesota Master Naturalists a few years ago. He noted that without thunderstorms and lightning, the earth’s atmosphere electrical balance would likely disappear within minutes, adding that the science community isn’t really sure what would happen on earth if this balance wasn’t maintained. As it is, somewhere on earth this neutralization though lightning is ongoing, 24/7, 365 days a year. On this day it was our turn, happening right above and around us.

Yet, another hypothetical and unanswered question that concerns scientists with the warming of the planet is what happens if the currents in the warming oceans were to suddenly stop. We are entering a time on perhaps the only livable planet in the universe where we have many unanswered questions about our future as a species, and perhaps our neglect is what is feeding these angry skies.

On our travels on this eventful day we followed the continuing storms with my camera, concluding in the nearby Bonanza section of Big Stone Lake State Park as the evening sunset painted nimbus clouds in an array of puffy beauty, like little cotton balls adorned with foundation makeup of a movie beauty. These clouds provided a momentary sense of artistic flair compared to the giant cumulonimbus clouds that we experienced mid-afternoon, the one that completely blanketed the prairie as far as we could see, clouds rolling and rising, churning with a grasp of what I read as anger. Pent up, deep-in-the-gut retching anger in the skies.

I couldn’t help but think of that chorus in Charlie’s song while looking at those deeply dark and churning clouds. As tired as I am of living in a politically angry world, being surrounded by a world reeking of ever worsening patterns and events within a global climate change that threatens all of humanity worldwide, there are those who choose to ignore the threat or dismiss it as some sort of a “liberal ploy” This causes an internal rage within me, a rage that seems awakened by the turbulent skies above us. I don’t want to live in such an angry world. I really don’t.

A few weeks ago my poet friend, Athena Kildagaard, excitedly told me one of her poems, “Translation,” was going to be published in an anthology on Great Blue Herons called “Broad Wings, Long Legs … A Rookery of Heron Poems.” Within moments an order was placed through the publisher, North Star Press of St. Cloud, and what a fine collection it has turned out to be, for I’ve long loved these beautiful birds.

Even the cover is artfully donel, And if you’re one of those who read the jacket statements, check this comment by Chuck Dayton, an environmental attorney and activist: “Herons are magical. They draw you into their world without moving …” 

So true. I’m just as guilty of that spiritual seduction as Chuck, the dozens of poets featured in the fascinating anthology along with countless avian and nature lovers.

Poets and herons share a lot of same … a strived beauty in form, a sense of seemingly meditative isolation, sudden flights of escape from perceived angst. This can come across in watching a heron at rest in old, worn trees, or quietly stalking an unseen prey, posing quietly in a small prairie stream, and yes, especially in the beauty of flight as they lift away from even the stealthiest canoe, easing lazily in flight downriver past leafy dogwood and cottonwood much as a poet edges from a crowd for solitude and a pad.

Eventually when you hear the beauty of their crafted words, carefully chosen, words stalked much like lone heron eyeing an unsuspecting frog, then finally, with the power of their chosen and spoken words, Athena and her brethren of poets stand poised to provide a mesmerizing reading of their artistic endeavors. 

It’s all poetry, both in form or in word, in feathered flight or presented word. What a wonderful marriage of nature and language.

Yes, this collection of poetry pays tribute to one of nature’s more splendid birds, the Great Blue Heron. Our family has kept a keen eye on these lonesome avian artists for many years. Sighting her first heron of the year meant that my late wife, Sharon Yedo White, had at last witnessed the closure of winter; that spring was soon upon us; that nearby waters were finally free of ice and the prairie meadows would once again bloom. Yes, for her herons were the artfully flying harbingers of a changing season, necks bent in flight with legs stretched behind straight as an arrow, a slow blur of powder blue, gray and white, all crowned with a short hooded cape of blackness.

Sharon loved these curve-necked fliers as much as I love my Sandhill Cranes, and perhaps for many of the same reasons. Grace. Perfect form and beauty, in waterside pose or in flight. along with an independent will. While I’d suggest that herons are much more solitary than cranes, collectively their individual beauty gives both species a select space in our appreciation of avian artistry.

We didn’t see many Great Blue Herons in my youth, although our move to Minnesota brought us closer to herons than ever before. Our first two homes were along, first, the St. Croix and then later, the Little Verillion River near Hastings. I soon discovered the beauty of fly fishing from canoes, and early mornings in a canoe flipping flies for bluegill or bass in the reedy shallows sometimes allowed me to sneak up on stalking, solitary herons. Once in Camp Lake in central Minnesota, a heron eyed me cautiously while strutting on a wooden dock as I quietly stroked my paddle. I expected flight at any moment, yet it defiantly held ground. 

Canoeing the rivers means you can rarely keep up with skittish herons as they keep a respectful distance between themselves and the paddlers. Yet, one late August or early September morning our fishing party of a handful of canoes that had pushed off from Skalbakken County Park below Sacred Heart passed several nearly full grown youngsters perched along the riverine bank. Back then there was live rookery tucked close to a nearby river bend, so we suspected these were the nearly grown from the spring hatch. Perhaps fear or even survival had yet to enter their collective mindset. Who knows, yet it was an unexpected and welcomed surprise.

Their grace and beauty has always attracted my photographic eye. My sister still displays a Christmas gift of one of my first images of a Great Blue, one I photographed in a wetland just west of Willmar one evening on the way home from fishing. That one morning fishing on Camp i would have loved to have had a camera although by then I had learned that cameras and canoes are not necessarily good companions, Yet, I can hardly pass up an opportunity of capturing new and different images. I’m seduced by the magic, drawn into their solitary stealth, captured by those pleasing plumes of color and awed by such graceful flight. 

One of the poems, written by James Silas Rogers, called “On the Cannon River” … which we canoed dozens of times … hit so close to home:

“… Our quiet, passing canoe

untethers their blue-gray forms.

They lift

and in solemn, slow strokes

row the air, move downstream.

Without wanting,

we chase a Great Blue for miles,

in pursuit of solitude.”

Heading into our short Fourth of July vacation a year ago, I spent quite some time studying a way to portray a gnarled and rugged looking old maple tree on the farm where I was raised. Despite its age the old maple keeps hanging on, for it was an old tree when I was a kid some 70 years ago.

For a brief period of that time one of the limbs held a rope swing. On hot, humid summer afternoons, hay crews would wander across the lawn to lay in the shade after one of my mother’s incredible meals … fried chicken or braised roast beef, mashed potatoes with thick, rich gravies, and typically one of her delicious fruit pies. Long before air conditioning, this was as cool as we would be from the dews of dawn toward the setting of the evening sun.

While from the distance it appears to be rather healthy, for the limbs are still flush with leaves, a closer look gives evidence of how the years have created deep scars, a hollowed and rotted out trunk, all of which has given the old tree reverence and character. For all practical purposes the tree is ageless, for there is no possible way to determine its actual age.

Here’s the skinny on trees, be they old and aged like our marvelous maples, or young sapling searching for space in the heavens. Only the outside layers of a tree are “living.” An incredibly small lifeline begins with the cambium layer located just inside the bark, which producers new wood and layers of bark. Adjacent to the cambium is another near microscopic layer called the phloem, which has the task of transporting the sugars created through photosynthesis from the crown to the roots.

Those layers, combined as less than the width of the tiniest sewing needle, is the lifelines for that old tree and two other very old maples on our adjacent farm place.

Those two less than a quarter miles away at the the old farm house where my nephew’s family now resides, perhaps dates back to the 1860s. That’s when the farm came into the family originally, and It’s where we lived until I was 10. It was there this past Fourth of July that I began nosing around looking at these equally old maples. Between his remodeled old house, incredible landscaping and a strikingly nice machine shed was our first “swing tree.” Yes, another aged maple with amazing character. It stands like the other maple, with grace and beauty, with stoic stubbornness fighting the fate of time.

A third old maple stands between the two. Never a swing nor shade tree, because until my nephew removed a fence to add more yard for his family of six, that tree was just that … nestled tightly against the fence. Storms and time haven’t been so kind to this third tree, for many of the stately limbs have broken away. What I found as neat, though, was that the roots at the base seem to have formed dinosaur “toes” over the years.

Yes, I’ve been accused of having a vivid imagination. So be it. That old beast of a maple needs to have some sort of striking feature since it has spent its life sequestered with a neighboring elm that I climbed one extremely hot and humid afternoon to jump up and down on a supple branch within the canopy with such energy that my alarmed mother came running from the house with absolute worry of what her young son was doing.

This was in the late 1940s, back in the polio scare, which caused her to be on pins and needles about her children’s health anyway. And, may I once again add, long before air conditioning. “I knew how hot and uncomfortable you were, Mom, so I’m’ trying to start a breeze!”

With the patience that made her such a great teacher and mother, she explained that despite my efforts it was highly unlikely that I alone could create a calming breeze regardless of how hard I tried or even how necessary it seemed. 

That elm, like the dinosaur-toed neighbor, that tired old maple, still lives. Both show their age.

All three of the old maples are identified as sugar maples, although my guess is that capturing the sap for syrup might be impossible. Even if it was possible, i would hesitate simply because I would be more interested in seeing them continue to live a long and breezy life.

If you suggested that maples are among my favorite tree species you would be correct, for we grew up swinging and having dreams of building tree houses on those stout and staunch limbs. That they’re still alive is both heartening and reassuring; that despite age there is still a good life and beauty. Yes, those three trees were old when I was a child, and I’m now 80. My guess is that one if not all are twice that age, for I’ve never not known them as being small and supple. I would venture to guess they were planted before my father was a boy, and perhaps when his father was one. 

Making the long drive from Listening Stones to my childhood home is a long eight to nine hour drive, yet there is little that makes me feel more at home nor welcomed than seeing those old maples. Old friends that they are. The two have shaded men and machine through the ages of that farm, and would today if modern machinery would fit beneath the limbs. Looking at the trees it doesn’t take much imagination to wonder if the trunks will eventually split completely apart, or that one of the usual ice storms coming to northeast Missouri winters will destroy the limbs or even the trees themselves.

Yet, they keep hanging on, those marvelous maples, using that microscopic thread of life to bring forth a new year of large pointy leaves and beauty beyond shade. Weakened, yet strong. Old, yet bold. Gnarled, yet stately. Like old friends, they’re our maples and we share a joy of living a long and wonderful life. And as I bring this to a close, I’ll extend special kudos to my nephew for leaving them be despite their imperfections. 

Just before stepping up onto the ledge of a flat outcrop she appeared suddenly from the grasses, nearly flat against the rough and gnarled granite, her beak wide with eyes speaking of the wild. She appeared to hiss at me, although in reality it was more of an anguished squawk. 

Her message was clear, both eloquent and forceful enough to convince us to skirt around the granite outcrop away from her perhaps quite well camouflaged chicks. She was quite adept in her role as a guardian of her small brood.

While nighthawks fly with uncommon grace, and dive from great heights with blinding speed, on the ground their short legs and horizontal stance makes them almost immobile. The Cornell Lab of Ornithology notes that nighthawks won’t make a nest and their young are so well camouflaged that they’re nearly impossible to find, and even the adults seem to vanish as soon as they land.

Not this one, for she was a guardian with a goal of protecting her young, and if the experts at Cornell and Audubon are correct, we might not have seen her chicks even if we’d stepped onto the outcrop. In all honestly, this was the first nighthawk I’ve ever seen on the ground. 

Researchers have noted that with the overwhelming takeover of grassy lands for commodity crops that much of the former territory of the nighthawks has been destroyed. Nowadays they use areas like the outcrops at Big Stone National Wildlife Refuge (NWR) as nesting sites. So she was an unexpected and welcomed bonus.

We had come to the outcrops in hopes of photographing blooms of the second of two cacti located in the Refuge … brittle prickly pear. Earlier we were incredibly fortunate to capture the blooms of the extremely rare ball cactus, and now the blooms of the brittle. Thankfully they were blooming on the adjacent flat outcrops so we were able to photograph several clumps of the beautiful pale yellowish flowers without disturbing the protective nighthawk.

This female nighthawk wasn’t the only guardian of newly welcomed hatched birds of the early summer. Due to our wandering through three different NRW’s in the past week we’ve noticed many different species doing the same, from raptors like bald eagles and ospreys to swans and ducks, pheasants and even sandhill cranes. What a joy to observe such protective care and parenting in nature. And now is a perfect time to be out and about to observe and capture images of all the different species in parenthood.

Not far from the nighthawk, for example, is a huge eagles nest, and the bulky “baby’ seems nearly as large as its nearby, perched parent. We caught both on the nest tree. We also were fortunate to capture an osprey on her nest at Tamarac NWR a couple of days later with three young ones she was protecting in the nest. Thankfully one continued to poke his head above the contour of the edge of the stick-heavy nest. 

While I haven’t had much luck in catching a brood of pheasants, for they’re quite good at sneaking into the roadside grasses before I can focus, watching the swans with their cygnets both at Tamarac and Sherburne NWR, along with some in a nearby wetland, has been a rewarding experience. Unlike the nighthawks, swans, like the sandhill cranes, have made a resurgence in numbers and are no longer consider rare. Same with bald eagles. 

At Sherburne we witnessed sandhill colts in lockstep with their parents, easing through the prairie grasses near the wetlands pecking for edibles. We weren’t considered a threat, it seemed, as they leisurely meandered along. Two parents and the colt.

Twice we’ve been stopped on the road by mallard hens as their tiny ducklings waddled slowly behind them across the gravel toward a nearby wetland. And twice I’ve captured wood duck hens with their brood cruising though the shallows of wetlands. So peaceful. So beautiful

Oh, and the swans! There isn’t a way to overlook or ignore the artistic beauty of swans, and when they’re with their cygnets the beauty is in the protective parenting more so  than the arts. Both at Sherburne and Tamarac, male and female couples hung close to their growing brood, easing through the waters with apparent ease, or resting quietly among the cattails and reeds.

Yes, this has been a wonderful start to the summer watching the recently hatched birds of various species as they move from cracked shells through their quick learning path. Most of these avian guardians are common to us. But the nighthawk? What a wonderful surprise and photographic capture. In a world of devastation due to wars and climate change, watching nature evolve in peace and parental care has been an incredible and welcomed diversion; that the world of nature marches ever onward despite the ills of humanity.