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A Calmness in ‘Colorful Silence’

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There, at the foot of my driveway, came an unexpected moment of peace. Drifts from the seemingly endless winds had edged the blowing snow over the rise and into the lip of our south prairie in near parallels, forming a fan-like array. I was en route to the mailbox as the sun was lowering into a sunset. Fortunately I had my camera along. A quick single paragraph back story:

Moments before I had looked through the plateglas window of our kitchen when I noticed odd poetic lines crossing a smooth expanse of snow. A “blue hour” color tinted the snow. At the moment and the distance it was difficult to see what might have created the burrowing lines, so I quickly dressed for the elements and grabbed my camera. Closer to the two inch depths of the lines were literally thousands of tiny paw prints. Voles were my assumption. Just beyond the half tunneled lines were telltale rabbit prints, which were enormous compared to those inside the small crevices. It was moments later that I came upon that unexpected moment of peace.

It was impressionist artist Henri Mattisse who noted that “a certain blue enters your soul.”

From the “snow waves” at the foot of our driveway.

Was that my “certain blue?” This was late afternoon mere hours after the brutal murder of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, the second of two ICE murders and the third resident ICE had shot. Renee Good’s murder, and the short film of her comment to her killer seconds before she was murdered, was challenging enough for my son had lived for a few years within a block of her murder. Pretti’s murder two weeks later hit me almost in the same manner as the second plane crashing into the World Trade Center. This time the attack against our nation was from within, perpetuated by our own president and his minions. After plodding through a trying day of distress came this unexpected sense of calm.

As this wave momentarily washed over me my breathing was easier. That cloud of discontent and anger was slightly lifted. Bluish colors eased from the images an hour of so later when I brought them up on my computer along with various shades of violets streaking through. Although I had driven and or walked past those drifts a few times before, there was hardly a reaction. Which made me wonder if the colors could have possibly created such a near instant sense of calmness?

The yellow light seemed a beacon of hope on the day of the Winter Solstice.

A study by the Moffit Cancer Center found that colors can affect your subconscious, and the color blue is strongly associated with peace, calm, and tranquility, evoking feelings of serenity, stability, and relaxation. Shades of violet, or purple, adds the Center, can evoke spirituality and inner balance. Perhaps that might explain the psychological finger-snap of calmness I had felt.

Other colors the Center says may have a similar impact: Green represents nature and offers a calmness and restfulness, while lighter shades like soft pink may promote physical soothing, and even white symbolizes peace through symbols like a dove. Snow and ice perhaps isn’t quite as soothing and comforting as, say, Richard Bach’s “Jonathan Livingston Seagull.” 

According to their website, yoga mat company, Manduka, did numerous studies on the affects of color as they searched for hues they felt would create a more mellowing mood for practitioners, and blue was among their favored colors.

An ambient sunset over the Big Stone National Wildlife Refuge.

Enough of science. How does this fit into the spectrum of the arts? After looking at the colorful blue and purplish sunset colors amplified by the wind waves at the base of our driveway, a quick review was made of some of the earlier images that had affected me at some point. One example was a Winter Solstice image taken last December. Although I had visualized a different image, a walk to the river’s edge allowed me to find a slight hint of yellowish light in the midst of a jagged ice floe bathed in a soft blue. That yellow seemed to symbolize an emergence of resistance in the depths of the blueish ice ­— this was barely a week after ICE had landed in Minneapolis, and only a few weeks before their two murders. Within the comfort of blue the yellow seemed a beacon of hope.

Impressionist Claude Monet described such a sensation as a “colorful silence,” while Ralph Waldo Emerson noted, “Nature always wears the colors of the spirit” while capturing the serene, grounding influence of softened hues. 

As I look around in these dour and dangerous times, there seems a need to find a some sense of inner peace and comfort. Moments in nature are offered as a way as do colors. Mine momentarily came in remnant colors of a sunset on a cold winter afternoon at the foot of our driveway. And a day or so later, walking along the edge of the prairie as evening settled in came another moment of calm that is much more common, that of what a young friend once labeled as a “rainbow” sky ­­— those “twilight hues” of softened blues that meld into a soft violet along the prairie horizon as darkness settles in. I have a deep longing for such moments.

A ‘rainbow sky’ above our family’s Shagbark Waters farm pond.

Long ago my eyes were drawn to the eastern sky more so than a setting sun, seeking those ambient and softened colors along  the horizon, those same twilight colors I remember from my teenage years while casting flies close to the cattails of a farm pond and feeling the coolness of the evening surround me. That softened violet that yields ever so slightly to a milky blueness, of how those pastel colors of an approaching evening would slowly ebb away the cares of the day. Yes, Monet’s “colorful silence.”

Unless we are blanketed with deep cloud cover, the beauty of ambient colors banking off distant clouds in easterly skies have captured me for decades. Then there are those rare moments of being unexpectedly surprised by the soft blues and purples in wind blown snowy drifts that offers a sudden calmness in the midst of our nation’s turmoil. In these changing times. In these times when a hint of “colorful silence” seems a blessing.

In Times of War

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Most of our recent days have us enveloped in frigid, icy whiteness due to drifting and blowing snow, obscuring the normally visible including our roads, nature and landscapes. During a blow we can barely see our mailbox about the distance of a football field away. Temperatures are well below the comfort of humanity. Forecasts for the Ice Out protests on Friday suggested the coldest temperatures of our current winter will be accompanied with staunch winds. Meteorologist Paul Douglas suggested in a weather column this week that these will be the coldest days of the past seven years.

Frankly, though, I am thoroughly ICE-d out and in need of escape from the inhumane war being waged against our beautiful state by our Federal government. It’s a chore to handle reading the first five or six pages of our two dailies with our president threatening NATO allies and projecting wars not only here in Minnesota, but wherever his newest fantasies of taking over the world suddenly enters his fevered mind. I’ve been in need of nature, or whatever I might see in it within this haze of snowy whiteness.

Rather than fight my rage or cocoon indoors, I’ve instead taken to the country roads where if one ventures slow enough and can still see the grassy edges alongside the gravel, that beyond this narrow measure of suspected safety there might be some interesting imagery to capture. Of course, such conditions mean you must travel with your headlights on and with a prayer or two. Not just because of potential traffic. Combining these temperatures and winds, a simple, costly mistake might be deadly.

For example, my driver’s side window on the pickup seems to be permanently frozen tight against the frame. This means that for an unobstructed view with my camera I must exit the warm comfort of the truck into below freezing temperatures and wind gusts up to 40 mph. Locking myself out is a constant concern. This combination of factors literally takes your breath away and causes your heart to pound. One wouldn’t survive long in these conditions, which causes me to shudder at the thought for those who are unfortunately homeless, or thrown into an ICE truck or unheated compound, and I remain wholly respectful of friends and neighbors who have pledged to protest in the streets of the Twin Cities.

Unfortunately accidents can happen and do so quickly. A day or so ago I stopped for the mail and an advertising newspaper supplement and a few envelopes blew from my hands. Fortunately big bluestem came to the rescue on the envelopes so I didn’t have to wade into the deep, blowing snow out into the open prairie to retrieve them. The supplement may have ended up in Lac qui Parle or Chippewa County many miles to the south. My sincere apologies for littering!

While I would prefer tracking down trophy bucks who have yet to shed their antlers, or some nifty and shifty colorful birds, finding imagery in this whiteness has been somewhat rewarding. These weather-related factors offer varying views of what is commonly seen. A few years ago on the way home from Sioux Falls on a foggy morning my eye caught a glimpse of a wind turbine barely peeking through the grayish haze. Fog covered the base and most of the tower and pushed down from above as I pulled over with my camera. Seeing only portions of the upper third of the turbine seemed otherworldly through the halo of haze.

I’ve found a similar view of several nearby trees these past few days as mystic and barely visible views have momentarily peeked through this wind-driven whiteness. Prairie grasses have bent to the elements as the rasping particles of icy snow knifed through the matted vegetation. Birds hunkered low behind thick branches and leafy clusters, feathers fluffed in life-saving protection, hopefully with long enough soft quilts of down feathers to cover their bony legs as much as possible to prevent freezing. Some hide beneath our deck, too, with the feeders mostly devoid of even sparrows. Occasionally a nuthatch will bounce from the haze to quickly perch for a “happy” meal.

This is, as the old prairie people like to say, a short world. It’s not unlike fog, though much more dangerous. Fog rarely survives in such temperatures. Not around here. We don’t have a lake effect similar to Superior, yet the snow haze seems foggy enough. Almost a pure world of whiteness, except for when you linger over an image where hints of brown, a khaki-looking brownness, shows through. Dirt. Poor dirt after years of indiscriminate farming practices. Yes, dirt is blowing, too, except where stalks were left standing after harvest or the farmer has planted a cover crop.

On a recent clear morning following a staunch eastern windy whiteness we awakened to nearly a millimeter of dirt covering our prairie and lawn. Later that day on a drive between wind storms into the black desert to visit an ailing friend, the winds had provided some interesting art of erosion scenes, particularly on US 12 between Sacred Heart and Hector. I longed to have my camera along although I have a library full of such fearful art.

Often I’ll look out our kitchen window, especially around sunset when sometimes a hint of color breaks through the haziness along the horizon. Perhaps the only light and color of an entire day. Some moments overtake me as I rush into my warm outerwear and head for the truck. Rarely do I leave the end of the driveway for in these winter months a farmer’s windbreak across the gravel seems to align well with the momentary light and clouds, yet on the ground snow continues to flow and blow, with way too much velocity to settle into a drift.

This morning there was a break in the whiteout, and looking out my office window at a lone tree in the distant former fence line, herringbone patterns of blowing snow shifted across my neighbor’s tilled crop field. It was like watching an earth-wide kaleidoscopic show as snow glided across the barren soil, whorls feathering above the driven flow, with that lone distant tree anchoring the distant view. Although I tried, capturing this winter-land magic in a stilled image, it didn’t come close to portraying the actual beauty of the moving magic. 

Snow flakes are said to be truly unique individually, offering microscopic magic without compare. No two are ever alike, according to visualists far more adept than me. Out here in the prairie our winds win over that crystalline magic and beauty, collapsing the individual crystals into waves of turmoil and gusts of obscurity. Either offers a glimpse of poetry. Winter, and snow have given poets, songwriters and word smiths muse for centuries, yet whoever pinned this following piece may have been speaking for a lot of us in Minnesota presently as we fight against both the icy wind-blown weather and our president’s storm trooper-ICE mugging and murdering us on our streets and communities: 

“A snowflake is one of God’s most fragile creations,” the saying goes, “but look what they can do when they stick together!” 

As with a prayer: “Amen!”

A Year of Auroras, Birds and Wetlands

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One of the traditions I so thoroughly enjoyed in my long ago newspaper years came near the end of December when we were asked to sort through and submit our favorite image, or images, of the year just before New Year’s Day. This gave layout editors fodder for a traditionally slow news week between Christmas and January 1.

For us this was a chance to review the stories and our photographs. For me, that review was crucial to my growth as a photojournalist. Did the imagery seem to hold up to previous years, or was there a lag? Was there a sense of growth? Had my “eye” for composition, working with natural lighting, choosing an appropriate focal length worked with the news event or photographic moment?

My concern nowadays is if my “eye” has held true since my retirement as I’ve moved to more closely document our last one percent of the glacially-blessed native prairie and wetland ecosystem that has been systematically and throughly destroyed by mankind since the 1860s. This destruction and my care for recording the remnants photographically has been stated repeatedly in my artist’s statements that have accompanied my exhibits and art shows.

Since moving more into a creative arts community this tradition of reviewing my past year of imagery to choose 12 of my favorite images has continued over the past 11 years. My choice and intent is not to choose just one but a dozen, initially to pick one for each month. It didn’t take long to realize that better images were being left out, and since this is my choice on what to show, that concept died a quick death.

While the annual review is fun, the intent remains the same — seeking a measure of growth, of how my “eye” might have evolved over time. So, here we go, along with a few comments for each of the images are my dozen for 2025. If you wish for a closer look simply “click” on the picture to enlarge it. Meanwhile, thanks for your kind comments and support of my work through this and for all these years.

Just outside of Big Stone Lake State Park this piece of the glacial moraine that separates the River Warren river bed, now Big Stone Lake, and a huge, miles long ravine that is home to Meadowbrook Creek. This interesting afterglow was one of those “you had to be there” moments giving the native prairie the appearance of a staged play.

Moments before this was captured, I was pulling out of the fisherman’s lower parking lot below the Marsh Lake Dam when a pod of pelicans flew over. There was no chance for a picture, and I left the area disappointed. At the “T” at the end of the dam road, I took a left hopeful of getting closer to my road home and ended up at Curt Vacek’s machine shed. A dead end. As I headed back another pod flew over. Both times dozens of pelicans seemed to be heading toward their island refuge. Hopeful, I sped back to the dam, backed onto the dike and just as I rolled down my window and grabbed my camera, this pod flew over exhibiting grace and aerial choreography. Pelican flights often seem to offer such grace to our prairie skies. That the birds stood out against the subtle grayness of a cloudy sky makes the picture. One of my favorites from over the years.

Ever since moving here I’ve had an eye on this lone tree on the bank of a long drained prairie pothole lake that before being ditched and drained stretched for miles and over what is now many commodity grain fields. From the bottom of the old lake bed the tree looked to be in line with the sun of the Summer Solstice, and once again I was blessed by nature when a lone bird flew into the sunset.

Between my boyhood hometown of Macon, MO, and neighboring Atlanta, the Missouri Department of Conservation damed a channel of the Chariton River to create a multi-mile lake and eventual state park. After driving through the park we exited through the far north gate and turned toward the major highway when we crossed a high bridge at the last “finger” at the head of the lake. This wasn’t my initial view, yet the swallows flying from beneath the bridge and silhouetted against a distant brewing storm caught my eye back in mid-July, and again in review.

Although we had a cabin on Lake One on the lip of the BWCA, we did more exploring around the area because my favorite woman lacked comfort in a canoe, and in those adventures we stopped at Bear Head Lake State Park, which after years of being in and around Ely I had never noticed. We took a hike on a wooded trail that ended up at Norberg Lake. The calm waters of this small lake surrounded by age-old timber offered an incredibly soothing moment, especially in our distanced escape from the political chaos of the summer. This scene was a reflection of my calmness and comfort.

Just a few miles from home a lone pelican and the ambient afterglow reflected in a wetland. More of what I call poetic photography. Often I leave home just before sunset to drive around the area wetlands, and unlike most of the counties around us, it is estimated that 15 percent of the original wetlands still exist in Big Stone County compared to less than a percent elsewhere in Western Minnesota and Northwest Iowa. And it seems that every year I’ll come across a lone pelican in a prairie water wetland. This was my moment in 2025, a moment of peaceful bliss.

In my exhibit this image carries a simple title: “The Leaf.” Yes, this singular leaf caught my eye within the midst of the “forest” in the high Minnesota River backwaters of mid-summer at the Big Stone National Wildlife Refuge. I love the angular tree and its reflection, yet the “individualism” of the stark leaf is what caught my eye. I guess I’ve always been sort of a “loner,” like “The Leaf,” feeling a bit out of step with the society that seems to surround me.

November, and the “super” moon at Crex Meadows just across the Wisconsin border with Minnesota. Sandhill Cranes are my favorite bird and this image is one I’ve visualized for several years. An unfulfilled dream, if you will. With the promise of a full moon along with prayers we would have a cloudless sky, we drove nearly five hours across the state to Crex and got a motel room. We then found a vista that might offer a gigantic full moon rising along the horizon, along with hope that the cranes returning from the nearby stalk fields would offer a blessing. This was among several images of cranes flying through that incredible moon, and this was my favorite of the bunch. Once again nature provided a special blessing!

Then, the following morning in the “nautical” twilight … again, Sandhill Cranes. Have I said I love them? Even after a half dozen trips to Central Nebraska each March, along with various outings to both Crex Meadows and the nearby Sherburne NWR between St. Cloud and the Twin Cities, I can’t seem to get enough “crane time.” My first viewing of Sandhills was on a organic farm near Monte Vista, CO, when my now late friend, Greg Gosar, whose farm I helped feature in a Money Magazine story, came running into the house to ask if I wanted to sneak up on a feeding flock of cranes in his wheat field. We sauntered as quietly as possible up a sandy draw before leaning against the bank to see the birds. A highlight was a lone Whooping Crane back when their number was in the low 70s, along with what Aldo Leopold called the “trumpets in the orchestra of evolution.” This was in the late 1970s, and I’ve “chased” those beautiful songs and flights ever since.

Northern Lights, the auroras of the heavens …. a Cinderella-like moment for the normally muddy Eli Lake in nearby Clinton. I love this view of this disregarded lake on the edge of town along US 75 and a county road. Certainly I’ve witnessed more spectacular Aurora displays, yet what attracts me to this image is both the natural composition along with the reflection highlighting the colors even as “subdued” as they appear. Despite the shallow waters, seldom seen as blue, the Aurora awakened the waters from its normally placid blandness — an Aurora that provides a glimpse of normally unrealized beauty.

While we’re on Northern Lights, this was captured with my cell phone when the settings on my camera got messed up. This was a spectacular display in all directions, and taken over a prairie wetland at the lip of our prairie looking toward the Northwest. While the October 10th display was considered the highlight of the year’s displays among us Aurora geeks, this display might have been an equal, offering both vivid colors and that hum from the heavens … something you don’t always hear, with colors you seldom see this far south.

Another moment from a nearby wetland, a Great White Egret lifting from a vista featuring a setting sun. Once again when I look through my couple thousand images of wetlands, I feel such a sense of loss. Besides the benefits of recharging the underground aquifers and cleansing agricultural chemicals from the runoff, they benefit wildlife and provide incredible beauty to the prairie for many of us. The 99 percent of destruction of the wetlands is such an incredible loss, and a loss that keeps me in constant search for poetic imagery. And in this instance, I was once again blessed by Mother Nature.

The Gracefulness of Being

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Perhaps it was the title: “How to Age Gracefully.” I was hopeful that this was a question more so than a statement for I’m not getting any younger, and now in my 80s, a time when many of my peers have sequestered themselves into a recliner or couch, I sense a need to keep charging forth creatively with an intense fear that my slowing down is the first step toward the grave. Following, perhaps, a lengthy time of acute boredom!

For the past few weeks hours have been spent in my wood shop and studio preparing items for the area Christmas Markets, and then an old friend, Dale Pederson, arrived with a pickup full of pre-cut timbers to install a planned canopy over our studio door to keep snow and ice away from the entrance. We were both fighting the calendar and weather.

In trying to balance all of that, by bedtime for three straight nights my mind and body was a wreck. There was nothing graceful about it, or me, and yes, on one of my ventures into the wood shop to rip a board on our last afternoon a misstep sent me sprawling across the concrete floor. Grace? Hardly. Fortunately my head missed a standing concrete block that was off to one side. Does that count as an old man’s fall? 

Grace is what I sometimes find in nature …

A few days later at the library while returning a great nonfiction book called “Sea of Grass,” an in depth portrayal of the complete destruction of American’s vast prairie between the Smokies and Rockies by Dave Hage and Jo Marcotty, this new book … “How to Age Gracefully” … seemed to jump off the shelf and into my waiting hands. 

Like Hage and Marcotty, the author, Barbara Hoffbeck Scoglic, was also a former reporter for the Star Tribune. My wonder was if my quest for grace was irrational, if not impossible; is there an emerging path for my unstoppable aging? Scoglic’s was an interesting read, though basically she wrote a day by day journal of her moving into an assisted living senior center. Now in a wheelchair, and being completely unreliable on her feet, Scoglic recounted various conversations and personal memories along with a morning ritual of coming off the elevator to see who might have survived for another night.

Perhaps I missed the “graceful” piece. No, her’s was not a “how to” effort. So my venture continues as I wander down a different path. 

Grace … a moment of tenderness of a burly bison cow with her newborn calf …

While I was working with Dale, and on various pieces for the Christmas Markets, an old conversation from years ago kept cropping up. It was on a cold, windy and snowy day “way back when” that I unloaded my collection of items from my van into one of Montevideo’s Chippewa Village historical buildings to discover my display partner was a 91-year-old man, a flat-plane wood carver and painter of Norwegian trolls, gnomes and Ole and Lena farm characters. After our introductions and getting set up, I asked the elderly artist about his work  and what kept him going.

“At my age,” he said with a wry smile, “what else would I do?”

Grace … when unexpected swallows appear to give ambience to an image …

Often I think of him, and have told that story to other artists who confide that they’re thinking of retiring, of giving up. Nowadays I sometimes wonder about myself. It’s not so much about aging gracefully, whatever that means, rather than wondering what else would I do? The walls and panels in my studio are full of canvases, and I make numerous smaller items featuring my photographic work. Over these past few weeks I’ve poured through a few thousand images created over the past 15 or so years, from when I retired from the country weekly to begin my efforts of portraying the last one percent of an ancient and nearly completely destroyed original prairie pothole biome. 

In so doing I sometimes find a choice image previously overlooked, or marvel at something long ago printed onto canvas and sold, and still hopefully hanging on someone’s wall. I also have thoughts of why continue? Do I need more images? Yet, quitting seems so unreasonable since I still throughly enjoy working with the magic of natural light, composition, ambient colors and those quirky surprises your find in nature. Those valued moments of internal celebrations when all those artistic elements come together … like when a trio of Sandhill Cranes flew over me recently at Crex Meadows in the ambient softened colors of a prairie sunrise. Yes, a portrait of grace. Color. Movement. Poetry. Nature. Perhaps finding grace in the imagery is more than can be expected. Then there’s this: What else would I do?

Grace … when poetry of nature blesses you with a memorable moment …

I still find magic in the prairie, in the skies, the timberlands, the BWCA, the mountains and in those sweeping landscapes all around. I find joy in the wild beings, in an unexpected flush of birds over a prairie meadow, or a poetic surprise of birds suddenly appearing in an otherwise mundane landscape; the immense poetry of trees, of their hefty, spreading limbs, of how a single tree within a forest can portray such stark individualism, of how the symmetry of autumn leaves can bring a smile; plus the wonder of the beyond, be it a breathtaking full moon coursing light across water or a sea of prairie grass, or offering a special moment to silhouette a crane or heron, or the fluid aerial ballet of an Aurora Borealis offering graceful waves of heavenly beauty; or even that of my dog, Joe Pye, ambling through our tall grass prairie at Roberta’s side sniffing at mysteries I’ll shall never know, of his pure excitement of simply being alive and free.

Yes, alive and free, of an ability to create and hopefully capture beauty that so long ago was basically erased from our collective consciousness. Hopefully in my aging I’ll continue to embrace those joys of capturing natural poetry more so than in my seeking some sense of personal grace. My fear is if I don’t note that discovery of natural poetry with my art that I will no longer find joy or the magic in life. Without that magic and joy, what would be the point? What else would I do?

In Pursuit of a Dream

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My dreams and visualizations of capturing my beloved sandhill cranes, birds of such poetic flight and stoic stance, silhouetted within the glow of a beautiful full moon have been craved for years. Cravings that caved, especially along the Platte River in central Nebraska years ago when “uncooperative” cranes simply avoided a full moon high in the sky. This, I hoped, would be different.

When forecasts of a full moon were made a lovely Wisconsin marshland refuge beckoned. I was hopeful of having a large globe rising from the horizon, blazing with color … something quite different than that moment in Nebraska … with the cranes cruising through. Hope resonated from the colorful moon names all heard within moments of our arrival …   “Super” moon, “Harvest” moon and “Beaver” moon. Native American lore provides even more mental possibilities, dangling the names of a Whitefish Moon, Deer Rutting Moon and even Frost Moon for the November lunar show. How about a “Sandhill Crane Moon?” That, at least, was my hope.

With luck a beautiful glow and globe of a moon would appear on a clear night, and since we had free time, we meandered across the state to Crex Meadow Wildlife Area just across a paved road from Grantsburg, WI. This would be a sunset/sunrise affair, prime times for sandhill crane activity unless you opt for mundane images of grain field gatherings. 

Thousands of cranes traditionally stop at this 2,400 acre marshy refuge where each autumn they congregate for pre-migration safety they find within the numerous and large wetlands surrounded by miles of dike roads as they stock up for their long flight. 

Certainly there were cautionary concerns on our four hour drive, for Grantsburg and Crex Meadows is as close to the Eastern Minnesota border as we are at Listening Stones to South Dakota. My concern? Clouds. Be it eclipses, Northern Lights, comets and numerous attempts of photographing the Milky Way, cloud cover has been a lifelong photographic nemisis. Still, I made hotel reservations and convinced a neighbor to mind Joe Pye overnight so we might fulfill my dream of capturing the cranes cruising through a rising, neon bright “supermoon.” What was there to lose except time and money? 

Then something entirely unexpected occurred. After spotting a couple of singular cranes as the “golden hour” light descended upon us, I pushed the review button to check on the color, light, composition and selective focus to discover a totally blank review screen. Yes there was momentary panic. All the visible and magical buttons were pushed on the camera body. To no avail. 

We began by working a large “flowage” along the Main Dike Road where I’ve previosely captured successful images. As the golden hour light began to bask we had seen only a few cranes. Yes, an attendent in the main headquarters had suggested this as a possible location for capturing the rising moon. When you have but one chance on capturing a dream, nervousness settles in. Quickly a move was made to the nearby “Phantom Flowage” where we found an excellent, unobstructed view of the eastern horizon. Our wait for cranes was short as they began returning from the nearby stubble fields.

Since it sounded like the shutter was working I continued to focus and shoot. Memories of all those years of shooting film without instant review came to mind. Apparently I’m now fully immersed in the digital age and long past those long ago travels to many of the lower 48 states for magazine stories and corporate assignments, back when there was a certain confidence that my images were securely captured and saved on rolls of Kodachrome or Tri-X, that in the developing the creativity would magically appear. Would it again? Regardless, I would be “shootiing blind.”

Magically the upper crescent rim of the moon suddenly broke on the distant horizon and it slowly rose higher into a lush fullness. A moment of awe struck even without my loveable cranes. I was still hopefully pushing the review button. Mental notations were made to remind myself to keep the faith, that I had been in this situation hundreds of times back in my career days. 

Initially distant flocks crossed in front of the moon, and thoughts were made to capture various images just in case I might convince my artist friend, Joyce Meyer, to sandwich if I couldn’t fulfill my visualizations. Over the years she has made about a half dozen “sandwiches” for me due to my ignorance of post production technology.

In the midst of those thoughts a few cranes began flying much closer to us to land just a few hundred yards across the marsh. With no way of knowing if any had been captured silhouetted against the incredibly beautiful “supermoon”, I continued to keep shooting until complete darkness had settled in. 

About an hour before sunrise we returned to the muskrat lodge to await any early activity. As I stood outside the car waiting for light and bird movement, those “trumpets from the orchestra of evolution,” as Aldo Leopold poetically described their haunting calls, began in earnest. Within moments I was surrounded with an unforgettable experience of sound. From either side of the graveled road, and from above as a nearly invisible flocks flew over. This was truly a moment of auditory heaven.

Eventually morning broke and I could easily capture cranes landing near enough for some nice photographs. In time, though, the curtains closed as the cranes, little by little, flock by flock, lifted from the marshlands to head toward the stalk fields. After a breakfast of hearty pancakes we made the four hour drive back home to the prairie where we were greeted by an anxious dog and a deafening quiet away from those syncopated sounds from the marshes. 

After a few friendly pets I rushed to the computer to insert the card and was graciosly greeted by cranes bathed in golden light and far more images than I would have ever taken had the camera monitor worked. Eventually I worked my way through some 800 images, or about 29 and a half rolls of Kodachrome, a tedious process that produced 80-some keepers that included many of sandhills silhouetted against that gorgeous supermoon. Dreams granted many times over!

Afterglows

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Sometimes a colloquialism may come back to bless you, something I’ve been thinking about for a few days of receiving some of those blessings. First, with apologies, the back story:

Denver was the destination of a special 4-H award a few years before I was old enough to drive. Some 17 years or so later Denver was my destination after leaving a comfortable and supportive managing editor with the Dubuque Telegraph-Herald. An interesting tie between the two dailies was a fellow named Monk Tyson, who was nearing retirement with the Post.

As I traveled through the towns along the Mississippi River, and into the depths of the wooded hills of the Driftless on both sides of the river, from Galena to Prairie du Chien and places inbetween, many of the older people I met and interviewed for stories kept mentioning Monk’s name. We apparently covered the same beat at least a generation or so apart.

My blessing this past Sunday …

When I arrived in Denver for the second time I was initially given a freelance assignment by the ME John Rogers for the Post under none other than Monk Tyson. Yes, I finally would  meet the person behind an old and storied legend back in River County. Less than a week into that assignment I was called back to Denver and offered a full time position. Months later Tyson would have a massive heart attack in the parking lot across the street from the newspaper. A week or so later my assignment was changed. I would replace Monk as the “state side” reporter, meaning I had left the Driftless for the Rocky Mountains to continue working a familiar job.

Then on Monday this happened, initially seen while cooking dinner …

Eventually we would create a column called Country Roads that packaged a typically full page layout of my photojournalistic efforts along with a story. That meant I was spending most of my time outside of the office and Denver, rolling from town to town, hooking up with ranchers and even wine makers, farmers and lonesome High Plains characters with stories to tell. Everyone, as feature writer’s learn, has a story. 

Often in my trunk was a fly rod, a box of trout flies and a kite, the latter of which I loved to sneak onto some remote mountain cliff after work where I could play with the winds in a full 360 degrees of sky and unpredictable winds. Again, after work! After an interview in those mountainous climes I would ask for either a cliff or trout stream. In the Plains, a good steakhouse!

Often times I receive a little help from my friends, the birds!

This was a time I when learned the meaning of a new colloquial phrase common to the people among the mountains. “Afterglow.” You might be having an early breakfast in a small town cafe when you would overhear someone say, “Wow, did you catch the afterglow last night?” Their meaning finally dawned on me, for you see, there is rarely a place where you can actually catch a true sunset because of the mountains, yet the ambient colors from a lowering sun would paint the top of the peaks and those towering clouds, especially those to the east, with amazing colors. For those it wasn’t about sunsets but the afterglows.

Nowadays, living in my weird sense of retirement, sunrises from my deck or sunsets through the huge plate glass kitchen window while cooking dinner are rather common. Afterwards comes the afterglows that will often fill the cloudy prairie skies with incredible colors. Rarely taken for granted, and always appreciated, it is as the late professor, dean and essayist Bill Holm would suggest, “A horizontal grandeur!” 

Back in May, above the Big Stone Moraine …

Frankly, for me at least, sunrises are seemingly more “grandeur” than those late afternoon sunsets. Oh, but the afterglows! Yes, Colorado and the other mountainous states have those moments when the afterglows are stunning, although I might suggest that the prairie skies are far from a shrinking violet as ambient colors create vistas as stunning as any view you might visualize in the mountains. Yes, they’re such a blessing!

And I almost always look eastward away from a setting sun in search of clouds and ambient colors, of softened light, of how it might blend with what a young friend calls the “rainbow sky along the horizon.” Sometimes the reflections in the wetlands adds another entirely beautiful spectrum to an image, and when you can add the turkey feet of the Big Bluestem, there is no question that you’re in a nice patch of prairie. 

And, when reflected in waters, this the Minnesota River, the pleasures are immense …

I have nothing against mountains, yet as Holm suggested, the vastness of a prairie sky can be just as humbling as it is magnificent. When those colors paint the clouds I’m often in awe. This reminder came to me again earlier this week with two incredible afterglows I was able to capture. 

Now in a more reflective period of my life, so many memories have a way of sneaking into my consciousness. Those times along the Mississippi, and those in the Plains and mountains of Colorado, offer strong moments of a wonderful past. Sometimes those moments are visual, and happen after the sun has lowered beneath the rim of the horizon and a pallet of ambient colors paint the clouds up above. No two, it seems, are ever alike, and in their own way, each individually, offers a unique vista. So thanks to all those folks in the mountains for what was then a new word, and still a reminder that sometimes the light after a sunset is often the most beautiful of all.

Along the River

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Initially I didn’t realize I needed a river. We were simply on a lazy afternoon drive with only one commitment. Yet, there seemed to be a calling, one apparently buried deeply in subconsciousness.

Yet, here we were. For thirty some years my “home river” was the Minnesota, from the headwaters at the foot of Big Stone Lake down to Mankato where it takes a serious bend to head northeasterly toward its confluence with what becomes the Mighty Mississippi. Hundreds of gneiss outcrops line the shores of the upper river, and eagles often man the riverine forestial  corridor. It’s a river that if one was blind to the murky waters it might suggest resemblance to the BWCA.

With a little time to kill before meeting up with an old friend in Granite Falls on Saturday, my car somehow ventured toward some of my old river haunts downriver, specifically to nearby Kinney’s Landing.

There would be no tag with this heron, who flew across the river away from us.

It was auspicious start for the picturesque access where we had launched our canoes so many times over so many of those years was both empty and appeared in disregard. Part of that is undoubtedly due to a summer of high water that prevented meeting up with my old fishing buddies for a bit of walleye and catfish angling. Floating the currents over many of those years to ease behind a dead fall to drop a baited hook has continued even though I have moved from the “upper” portion of the river to the headwaters an hour or so north by auto. Many overnight gravel bar camping trips happened along these waters with huge driftwood bonfires, lines on salt water rods set for all night flathead fishing while I typically did the honors of frying freshly caught catfish served with wine kept chilled in a cooler. Hey, we knew how to live.

Yes, I miss those times.

On this day the arched “church” of a tree way canopy overshadowed ample parking spaces I remembered being full so many times, and the landing itself was mired in a thick cake of mud. An old photo of the access captured on a foggy morning years ago graces my wall, a portrayal both charming and welcoming, a place where you might sit for awhile to take in the surroundings, to sniff the air and listen for feathery songs from the leafy canopy. On an otherwise warm autumn afternoon that would have been prime, such poetry was absent. 

Leaves are just beginning to turn …

After several minutes we left to take a riverine gravel that hugs the “west” bank where we played tag with a Great Blue Heron, that quickly grew tired of us and angled across the river. The heron would basically be the only bird life we would encounter until we were near the headwaters hours later, where distant swallows livened a beautiful sunset. Yet, this was a familiar stretch, a length of river my writer and fishing buddy, Tom Cherveny, and I launched to paddle upstream to the Minnesota Falls Dam, which has since been removed. 

Before the dam removal the river spread almost lake-like to create numerous islands between downtown Granite and the dam. Just below the dam we caught stringers of nice catfish. When we paddled up to the dam from Kinney’s we would ease our way back, dropping lines along the deeper holes on the east bank and below a couple of river islands. Our heron had landed just downriver of the bigger of the two tree-blessed, rocky islands.

Now, at my age, standing on the bank and gazing at the murky waters, many fond memories of those trips came to mind. Moments that brought a smile, and a calmness that has seemed to be missing of late.

We caught the sunset at a bridge just west of Odessa.

Eventually, though, we headed toward Granite where a hydro dam still exists at the apex of this small, old artistic river town. Surprisingly there were no pelicans. Roberta, my dear partner, has expressed wonder about the sudden absence of the birds especially here in our home prairie. “I think we’re going to have a bad winter,” she’ll say. Perhaps, for on some of the prairie wetlands swans that typically have a couple of signets seemed to have hatched a half dozen or more this summer.

And, it seems as if one day our robust skies populated by two oriel species, brown thrashers, a brave catbird, Red Breasted Grosbeaks, umpteen swallows and even starlings became suddenly and eerily quiet. And, empty. Now? Sparrows and a few gold finches, slowly molting into their winter colors, fight squirrels for feeder space.

As we gazed at the rush of waters below the Granite dam she asked, “Are we following the river all the way home?” Well, yes, for you pretty much do, although you’ll cross the Chippewa, the Sag and the Pomme de Terre en route. We live here in a vast river valley, one created by the Glacial River Warren in whose abandoned bed now flows the minuscule Minnesota — by glacial standards. 

Hours later, when we reached the vast expanse of the Refuge, though, we were actually back to the banks of our namesake flowage. By then the sun had lowered in the western sky, and we had ample clouds to create some beautiful ambient post sunset color. What a blessing to behold, from the river view on the edge of Odessa and into the Refuge itself, where we found reflected colorful skies in windless waters. Being along the river was actually an unexpected blessing, although one that was thoroughly needed. At least subconsciously.

A fitting conclusion to a beautiful “river day!”

You see, I fear our times, of our loss of compassion and caring for others. It seems increasingly difficult to know the feelings of old friends who are revealing personal thoughts so different than you believed we collectively shared. So on an afternoon of what I later realized was an internal discord, I came to realize just how much I needed a river. My river. A river so mistreated with siltation and chemical runoff, yet one that has followed the same channel since the breakthrough of Lake Agassiz some 10,000 years ago, waters that just keeps ambling along, sandpapering sad thoughts and sending the chaff off along in the down river currents. 

Then there was a heron, perched in the shallows, a dark crown over its grayish blueness, and there was a flow that sometimes in less flooded times offers ripples through shallows for a sense of calmness. And now on an autumn afternoon the wooded riverine banks are taking on a magical transformation of color, and on this, an evening with troublesome anxieties, when the skies came alive with such an amazing palate of color … these are times when little feels better than the comfort of being along the river.

Prairie Harmony

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A delightful hum is providing us new music here at Listening Stones Farm. It comes from near a sidewalk from four years ago, and it comes from a native prairie garden we created beside the sidewalk a year ago. Across the adjacent patio are a pair of “strip” gardens of native plants where “blanket” flowers have created a mid-summer dominance, Across the patio is our “triangle” prairie garden where compass plants have for years bullied their way to crowd out nearly everything else. Tall and rising from the square stems are the yellow blossoms.

Bees and other pollinators have come in droves to feast on the multitudes of pollen from these plantings. Before all of this color and blissful natural harmony our lawn, a boring landscaped carpet of green covered our yard. We would have a few weeks of sparkling yellow dandelions dotted with bees. That was about it other than our nearby prairie restoration.

Initially elusive, the yellow swallowtail eventually allowed some photographic moments!

Adding to these gardens are a couple of shaded pollinator plantings alongside the house where in the past we would have had an early flush of beautiful red columbines. Initially these native plants hugged the north side of the house, then I took a spade and transplanted a few inside a little space existing inside an ancient sidewalk someone years ago laid into the soil next to our solarium. I don’t know how far the sidewalk extends. When planting the shade-friendly prairie plants we purchased from the Lac qui Parle SWCD last summer I realized a lot of the sidewalk was buried beneath the lawn, and that the concrete walkway reached at least to where our rooted horseradish dominates.

We also have our terrace garden that stretches along the west side of the house that faces the county road. Huge granite boulders were plugged into the landscaped rise where various prairie natives were planted in a narrow nook of exposed soil that is separated from the lawn with landscape fabric. Like a prairie, every year is different, and like the other plantings, weeding is constant chore.

A pair of monarchs tantalized before landing near one another.

So we have bees and other buzzing pollinators completely surrounding our home. That’s the music we hear. A hum of a natural orchestra highlighted by a variety of songbirds, from wrens to a pair of yellow warblers with a catbird and mourning doves adding a sense of sweet percussion.

Yet, I’ve not even mentioned the butterflies, whose flights might be inaudible to human ears. At least mine. 

Right now we have numerous monarchs flitting around that were recently joined by a beautiful Eastern tiger yellow swallowtail. It seemed the red admirals settled in first, sneaking in quietly, along with a variety of fritillary species. Other random species have been in and out, and I’ve found it difficult to keep up with all these beautiful visitors. Dainty cabbage whites, with their little dots displayed on the wings, have sneaked in as well

A view of three of the gardens … our new one to the right planted a year ago, the “triangle” to the left with the tall compass plants, and the peeking strip garden next to the studio.

So many of the native flowers are now in bloom that our eyes feast on color from yellow to white, bright orange to glittery purple, so when you add all of these flitting, flying colorful blossoms of butterfly wings with the hum created by the variety of bees, it is all a wonder to behold.

As mentioned, we also have eight acres of grassy prairie basically surrounding our home, although since a misguided though “helpful” neighbor mistakingly mowed down a post-burn incredible flush of flowering natives years ago, some of the joy is missing. Those flowering plants have never recovered. Oh to have retained all that incredible color within the mix of both cool season and warm season prairie grasses, our prairie would be a wonder. This was an unfortunate mistake that has haunted me ever since.

Red admirals were our first butterflies in our new pollinator plot.

Hopefully we aren’t done with our pollinator efforts. A house-long narrow strip of lawn exists between the house and terrace garden that is begging to be converted. This section is barely wide enough for the mower and simply looks awkward and, well, a bit naked. This has been a transformative strip for years. Initially a couple of large bushes existed beneath the kitchen window that we pulled out to make way for blueberry bushes. Those new plantings never caught hold, and it’s been barren except for lawn grasses ever since. 

Hopefully someday one of my favored native prairie plant friends will come for a visit to offer advice for selection and placement of plants for that area. My reaching out hasn’t worked so far, although I’m still hopeful. Why? One only needs to look at our newest pollinator plantings along the sidewalk to understand why. Because of my ignorance that patch is completely backwards. Huge bushy plants are so dominate along the sidewalk that many of the smaller species have been crowded out, or are hidden in the background. Anyone with knowledge of those plants would no doubt guffaw as did a carpenter who witnessed my first attempts at hanging drywall. 

While the butterflies add joyous color, the bees and other pollinators create the hum of the orchestra.

Fortunately the butterflies and bees don’t mind, even if we humans are crowded off the sidewalk en route to my art studio. Yet, there are those moments utter joy. 

Earlier this week I took a momentary break on our newly refurbished deck with a cup of cold sun tea when I noticed the swallowtail hovering over the blossoms. Over the past weekend I had noticed it and went to fetch the camera, though when I stepped off the deck with camera in hand it lifted quickly to fly in flitting defiance to parts unknown. Now it was here, painstakingly maneuvering through the blossoms. A pair of monarchs were traipsing between the various enclaves, and I caught sight of a red admiral on the closer blossoms.

This strip of lawn just above the terrace garden will hopefully be transformed into another vast prairie planting yet this late summer or fall.

So I fetched my camera. This time all of the butterflies were cooperative, including the moody swallowtail, and so were some bees. Our plants? They seem to bask in their respective glory, posing time after time. Eventually a round was made to each of the various gardens as a lovely calmness eased over me. With it came with the realization that over a short period of time we have created so much more than that springtime flush of dandelions, and that we can now count on hearing the hum of pollinator music over and over again, accented with our bevy of birds, creating a natural symphony as sweet and soothing as a Bach’s concerto.

Isn’t that what it’s all about? 

The Balm of Dawn

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Initially I was rather discouraged, and perhaps “rather” isn’t quite strong enough to convey my feelings. You see, I had visualized an image for a week or so after we discovered that the beautiful meadow of cone flowers in the Big Stone National Wildlife Refuge had bloomed, long enough ago that many blossoms were already showing their age. Crinkled petals, some showing brownness on the edges of the delightful pink. In short, there wasn’t much time left to capture my idea.

My intentions were rather simple, for I’ve envisioned a simple softness of fog with the defusing warmth of a rising sun providing a bit of hazy backlight to this expansive meadow of pink. Summer fog, which happens frequently in the lowlands of the prairie, isn’t uncommon over the wetlands and prairie around dawn much like it does in the Boundary Waters, rivers and lakes. This meadow is just up the rise from the broad waters of the West Pool, which is a flooded basin managed for protection of waterfowl and other aquatic avians.

A Cormorant skips across the waters of the West Pool with a dawn breakfast in its beak.

Then, there’s this: It has been awhile since I’ve ventured out for pictures before dawn, somehow losing the habit of being up to greet what the late naturalist and photographer Edwin Way Teale called “nature’s finest balm.” Yes, dawn. Perhaps it’s an “age thing.” 

My dream of a foggy image is somewhat different since I’ve photographed these cone flowers religiously since moving to Listening Stones Farm a dozen years ago. After a scorching day the thought of a rising fog had me up and into the pickup about a half hour before sunrise. My intensions and excitement took an immediate hit because a dense cloud bank was covering the eastern sky. Since I was already up and headed to the Refuge, why turn back? 

Despite my disappointment I still eased from the truck with my trusty Nikon and wandered through the grasses and flowers making a few half-hearted images. Hardly anything worth remembering. My files are loaded with cone flowers from this meadow, including a really nice senior picture of the daughter of friends. Which wasn’t the point. My visualization was the point.

I could spend hours watching Black Terns ply the waters.

Perhaps Teale’s entire quote is worth noting: “For the mind disturbed, the still beauty of dawn is nature’s finest balm.” Taking this to heart would be my new challenge. 

After a deep breath, birds of various species were seen skimming across the still waters of the West Pool while above me Cormorants were scurrying by to their secret potholes, prehistorically shaped fishers silhouetted against the colorful, cloudy canvas of sky. Solitary Great Blue Herons made curved-neck flights across the muted skies. The skies were alive! It was then I remembered catching the gaping mouth and awkward warnings from a female Night Hawk on a distant outcrop. This didn’t have to only be about cone flowers and fog.

At the far bend of the motor trail I caught a Cormorant bounce-splashing across the surface with a small fish firmly captured in its beak. Kingbirds and a Bobolink moved across the grassy prairie trying to hide from the cameraman. Ring-billed Gulls and Black Terns provided nearly an hour of entertainment at the bend of the motor trail, playing in a nice reflected, colorful light. Terns were attempting their athletic poetry of dipping their bills into the waters as they sped across the surface. This alone can capture my attention for time on end.

Flights of White Pelicans are usually delightful to observe.

Of course, being in the refuge meant White Pelicans were around, although far fewer in numbers than the cormorants. The two fishing pals make an interesting contrast in almost all ways … color, shape and beauty of flight. They seems to ply the same spaces in search of nourishment with the Cormorants diving out of sight and the pelicans often teaming up to corner their prey. It was here at the bend of the motor trail where both frequent. Last autumn I caught hundreds of pelicans in military-like formations crossing the West Pool in murderous mayhem. Squadrons of them, numbering several across, all easing eastward across the waters. The next day there wasn’t a pelican in sight. Apparently I’d stumbled upon a last feast before migration.

Eventually it was time to move along so I drove around the last big bend toward the riverside parking lot hopeful of catching perhaps a wood duck. This portion of the Refuge is along the debris choked Minnesota River. I would find a single Pied-Billed Grebe in a limb reflection and a Green Heron that posed beautifully for me. All that remained was that protective Night Hawk.

It’s always a joy to see a Green Heron, and usually they’re more skitterish.

This was certainly a delicate mission for you don’t want to unnecessarily rile up nature, and particularly such a rare bird. We had initially spied her over the weekend when we had stopped at a flat outcrop to show a former exchange student ball cacti and were confronted by the “hissing” female. While Night Hawks are graceful and incredibly stunning in flight, hovering high in the sky before diving at nearly breakneck speeds, on land their extremely weak legs make it a challenge to move. 

She was still there and immediately flopped across the granite to defend her well hidden nest. Hastily I made about a half dozen images while standing several feet away where I hoped not to be considered a serious threat. Although I tried to be quick and unobtrusive, I had no desire to cause her unnecessary strife and tension. 

The increasingly rare Night Hawk, awkward on land, defends her nest near the outcrop.

Thanks to the various birds, including the awkward Night Hawk, my dawn foray was delightful and successful. Teale’s “balm” had worked wonders. And since my dear mother once gifted me with his “Journey Into Summer” as a teenager, here’s one last Teale passage that perhaps summed up my feelings: “Our minds, as well as our bodies, have need of the out-of-doors. Our spirits, too, need simple things, elemental things, the sun and the wind and the rain, moonlight and starlight, sunrise and mist and mossy forest trails, the perfumes of dawn and the smell of fresh-turned earth and the ancient music of wind among the trees.” 

Amen!

That Hue of Blue

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Several years ago while driving toward Blackbird Trail, that winding sweetheart of a drive through the Tamarac National Wildlife Refuge near Detroit Lakes, my eye caught a lone beauty of an interesting flower that I couldn’t believe was either “native” or “wild.” Yet there stood a beautiful lone blue iris, radiating and standing tall against the greenish nearby native marshy plants … with exception of the adjacent gangly cattails.

Was this some sort of garden remnant? Did someone luckily hoist a bulb into the marsh from the graveled road? 

After returning home a little research confirmed the identification, noting that Minnesota actually has two closely related “Blueflags” or native blue irises with territories divided on a loose geographic border drawn horizontally across the state from our largest city. Iris versicolor is the northern and predominant species from the Twin Cities up into Canada while Iris virginica similarly reaches from the Twin Cities south toward the Texas coast. 

According to the scientific explanation the upstate species is typically more richly pigmented on the outer sepal edges, fading lighter towards the “throat” with veins prominently tinted toward a faded greenish yellow. While microscopic characteristics might cause a botanist to giggle, the northern iris is typically a darker blue than its faded cousin. There! Science has spoken. 

Now here is a bit of poetry, thanks to Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale” — “Then we had the irises, rising beautiful and cool on their tall stalks, like blown glass, like pastel water momentarily frozen in a splash, light blue, light mauve, and the darker ones, velvet and purple, black cat’s ears in the sun, indigo shadow, and the bleeding hearts, so female in shape it was a surprise they’d not long since been rooted out.” 

Science, or blown glass like a pastel splash of velvity water, these beauties stand awash in the nearby greenery of Tamerac, catching a wandering eye like a thin metal washer drawn instantly to a demanding magnet.

While we had a free day and a will of once again hopefully capturing blooms of both the yellow and showey ladyslippers that bless this northern refuge, I also held hope that we might catch the wild blue of irises in bloom. All three wild flowers came through splendidly along with a host of other colorful wild flora. We were blessed. 

Not so much by the fauna, however. Not one songbird, including the fluttering and shy warblers, allowed me a moment. While the swans were cooperative, we had some near misses along the way: a grouse with three chicks slithered like spies deep into the trail grasses before scooting out to escape my hungry lens into the dense woods. This was just moments before I caught sight of a beaver in my rear-view mirror tugging a six foot willow branch by the clamp of his teeth while charging across the motor trail in a beaverish waddle. Like the spy-like grouse, it dragged the branch through the dense woody underbrush while successfully remaining obscured by the leafy branches. We then came over a rise to find a bald eagle posed perfectly on a branch of a dead tree. I quickly raised the camera although apparently not rapidly enough. My image was of the perfectly weathered grayish branch, a bunch of blue sky and the feet and butt of the rising raptor. Ah, but those wild irises!

It was in the midst of all that commotion that we finally came across the irises. In three distinct locations, each marshy, each different and distinct from the other. On our last sighting a broad curved broad grassy looking leaf of a plant would have made a nice arc over two near perfect younger blossoms. Without hip boots, though, my idea of making an image with a composition of the plants beneath the arc of leaf simply didn’t work. A thought of wading into the marsh with the hordes of mosquitoes was as much of a deterrent as was the possibility of sinking knee deep into the muck. Even laying onto the gravel didn’t provide the angle I envisioned. It was what it was. Welcome to nature. And those were the last of the dozens of irises we came across.

Our first batch was quite numerous, and I actually let out an exclamation of delight when they initially came into view. Time had played a role in their aging, however, with spent blossoms hanging blackish along with those struggling to grasp their fading beauty. What can one do when faced with these situations in nature? You simply do what you can. Between this incredible array of blossoms and those arching above the arc, we found another set that hadn’t aged so distinctly. Being partially shaded, it seemed, might have helped. This batch allowed me to play with light and depth of field, those tools of our odd trade. Perhaps too much time was spent attempting to create a bit of art from such a wonderful blessing of nature.

Yes, it was delightful to once again see the rich blues of the irises, along with the white and pink of the showeys. Those vivid colors of the yellow ladyslippers and the bright crimson of the columbines added joy as well. My partner, Roberta, suggested on our way home that I was smiling. Internally there was certainly a sense of peace and joy, that those six hours of drive time had been well worth the effort. 

Sometimes these seasons I photograph, be they birds, trees, prairie grasses or native flowers, help me check off a mental list. Do I need more images of wild turkeys fluffed in sexual desire, or the first poking of pasque flowers through dormant grasses after another long and dreary winter, or of those lady slippers I chase from the prairie to the northern woods as was the reason for this drive, or even the pastel waters of little black cat’s ears in the sun? As a naturalist and photographer, though, these are seasons of life, of nature, of the knowledge that for one more year all is surviving nicely in the natural world. Myself included. So yes, I was smiling!