A Day of Beauty

Sometimes I get so wrapped up in therapy and processing and my inner life that I kind of ignore the outside of myself. Even when I take walks in the park, my mind is going on about myself and my issues, wants, needs, etc. But yesterday, a good friend took me out of myself and into nature.

I got up at 5:30 for a 6:30 am pick-up. I didn't have breakfast because we were treating ourselves to kolaches and donuts along the way. I timed it well because I had just one more little thing to do when he called that he was waiting in the parking lot for me.

At first it didn't look too promising. There had been a forecast for 30% chance of rain and it was a little sprinkle-y and very cloudy when I got in the car. But we drove and drove to the southeast, talking and enjoying each other's company.

When we arrived at the nature preserve, it still didn't look promising. We hadn't seen any groups of snow geese along the road the way we had a couple of years ago. And it was still cloudy and overcast, making for a very flat light.

Traffic jam! The white in among the marsh are snow geese on the ground.

But inside the preserve were some 20,000-30,000 very smart snow geese. They can't be hunted inside the preserve and they simply covered the marsh, flying in and out, possibly looking for their favorite neighbors to land next to within the honking, foraging, white mass. Even with the cacophony of honking, we could still hear the explosions of gunfire from the hunting areas just outside of the preserve.

Snow geese coming in for a landing

After taking all the pictures we felt we could reasonably get from the far-off geese and those flying overhead, we took off to drive through the roads in the preserve and look for other birds to photograph. Usually we can find great white egrets and great blue herons and any number of other fowl who will willingly pose for us. But nearly every egret or heron or hawk we drove up to flew off as soon as we drove up or opened our windows to try to take shots without opening the car doors. It was only at the end of the day that it occurred to us that the rest of the birds were skittish from the sounds of gunfire.

The weather even got better and cooperated. We ended up with a bowl of blue sky and sunshine surrounded by a frame of gray and clouds, which closed in around noon. But by then we were done. We'd driven the entire preserve and missed out on photographs of a variety of birds, including a pelican. But as I reminded my friend, we'd been out in nature all day and been in each other's company all day and had a lovely time looking at beautiful birds, albeit mostly flying away from us.

Then we went down to the coast to see if there were any shorebirds around and there were none. It was like all the bird life was hunkered down somewhere. Well, it's raining tons today, so maybe they were just getting ready for the rainstorm a bit early.

Then lunch, which for me was red beans and rice and a couple of cornbread muffins, and the long drive home. Luckily we seldom run short on conversation and even when we do, we are comfortable enough friends to not mind the silences. Okay, I mind them a little, but not enough to simply babble. Often.

Lucky shot

When we go photograph birds, my friend lets me use one of his cameras and lenses, because you need specialized equipment for getting shots of birds. They seldom come up close and you have to be able to catch them on the wing, as well. I have a point and shoot, albeit a pretty good one, but it's more for landscapes and oceanscapes like the one at the top of my blog page.

So my friend took home his cameras and last night sent me my top 20 photographs --- he edits as he downloads and he has an impeccable eye, so I trust him to give me my good photos. I've shared a few of them with you here so you can get a taste of my day.

I'm glad I got out. I got totally outside of my head. At one point as we were sitting on a bench entirely surrounded by a sea of reeds, he asked me what I was thinking and I replied "I'm enjoying the moment, the beauty, and the sound of the breeze through the reeds." He said that's what he was thinking too. I enjoy being in synch with my friends and with nature.