Seeing Owls

There was a book titled “First Hunt” in the library of the elementary school I attended 40-some years ago, and, if you were to look at the check-out card in the back of the book, you’d see that a student named Kurt read that book at least 10 times during his fourth and fifth grade years.  You might make the assumption that the youngster  was obsessed with the idea of hunting...and since I was the youngster in question, I can tell you that your assumption would be correct.

What you couldn’t know is that I never got to go hunting -- not really hunting, anyway.  My grandfather was a hunter and he took me on long rambles through the woods near his Ohio farm.  We took hunting dogs along on our rambles, but no gun.  Perhaps my grandpa sensed that his grandson wouldn’t have the heart for the killing of an animal, and grandpa would have been right. 

Years later, as a teenager,  I carried my grandpa’s .22 rifle out into a corn field -- my grandfather was not with me that day -- and I shot a groundhog.  When the animal slumped to the ground, I could not bring myself to walk over to it.  I went back to my grandparents’ house, put the gun away, and never touched it again.

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I have a friend who is an amazing bird photographer and lately she’s been making trips out to the Washington coast where, for the second year now,  snowy owls have wintered.  The amazing creatures are native to the Arctic but they come here in the winter in search of food.  My friend has made some wonderful images, and  I pretty much begged her to take me along on one of her trips.

Monday I rented a telephoto lens longer than anything I personally own,  and my friend, two other photographers,  and I headed toward the ocean. We drove about 3 hours to the town of Ocean Shores, where we hiked a grassy peninsula of land running about a mile-and-a-half out into the Pacific.

“There’s one!,” my friend said, and I looked where she was pointing but saw only grassland. “There are two more!” she said.  Again, I saw no owls.

After a while, though, I guess I got my owl-eyes in shape, because I too began to spot the creatures.  We four photographers wandered the peninsula, spending most of the day making images.  We were careful to keep our distance, staying a non-threatening and respectful 600mm lens distance away.

My favorite picture from the day came when an owl yawned, and it’s quite possible I like that image because, for me, the owl seems unconcerned by my presence. I felt comfortable to be on a hunt where the shooting was done with a camera.

Simple Gifts

The folks whose small farm is behind ours called the other night to invite Leah and me over to see a hummingbird nest they’ve discovered in a tree on their property. I like it when things like this happen. The neighbors might have called and invited us over for a special dinner, or to watch a movie with them on TV, and that would have been nice. But that they called to share something simple like birds nesting in their tree...well, to my way of thinking, that is about as good as neighborliness gets.

Several days later, Leah and I had house guests and they asked me to take them on a hike. I called my friend, Tim, who lives here in town and, like me, is an outdoor guy. I invited Tim to come along on the hike, and Tim brought two of his friends, a human and a dog. We all piled into Tim’s truck and headed to the Olympic Mountains where we did a cool hike on a perfect day in the most amazingly beautiful setting, you’d think we were walking through some computer-generated movie landscape that couldn’t actually be real.

Simple gifts, these: Good neighbors; a fine hike on a picture-postcard summer day.

Thanks for coming along.

Spring Break

The temperature was 62 in the urban, Seattle-Tacoma lowlands. Trees were all busted-out in blossoms, and we drove past a number of cars with convertible tops down so drivers could enjoy the spring day. My friend Shelley and I were headed to Mt. Rainier, up-up-up into a high, still-snowy landscape, around 5,000 feet in elevation. Knowing that the warmer weather will, in the coming months, eventually make its way even into the mountain high country, our plan was to get out for a good hike, celebrating spring by saying good-bye to winter. Our car was packed with warm hiking boots, snowshoes and ski poles, and the day packs we’d carry that day held numerous combinations of gloves, stocking caps, and layers of outerwear.

Shelley, on spring break from her teaching job at a university back East, had come out to spend several days with us. A go-go-go human being some 20 years younger than Leah and me, Shelley seems to think of me as Hiking Trip Leader-Man. When I pointed out the irony that she and I would spend a beautiful, sunny day up in the snow -- while many of the students Shelley teaches were probably lying, nearly naked, on a beach in Florida or Mexico -- Shelley said: “Well at least we’ll all be wearing sun screen.”

And the day we had at Rainier was, in fact, as good as any day at the beach. The beautiful little peaks of the Tatoosh Range -- we’ve hiked and climbed up into those peaks on previous outings -- made us feel like we were Back Home. Another gift that day was that we happened upon a wild fox, napping lazily in the snow, seemingly unconcerned about our presence. I had time to make several photographs of the fox before he/she yawned, then got up and wandered off, perhaps looking for a more private nap spot.

Taking Notes

Leah recently had to travel out of town for several days and I experienced an embarrassing realization as we loaded the car so that I could drive her to the airport: I was packing more stuff to be away for five hours than Leah had packed to be away for five days.

Camera gear. I can’t go anywhere without it, but my dear mate sometimes gives one of the wrinkled-nose expressions that tells me she wishes I’d try.

I suppose most everyone has heard that Socrates observed: “The unexamined life is not worth living.” I wonder what he’d think about a photographer NOT taking pictures of whatever it is that he sees? Leaving my cameras behind, even for a few hours, is simply not an option for me.

I just never know what kind of miracle might land in front of me and stretch its wings in the morning sunshine -- when a moment might present itself, a moment that I would not want to go unnoticed or unphotographed. So I schlep the camera bag, even if it means I have to endure good-natured grief for overpacking.

Boys of Summer

I’m not a huge sports fan, but, as a male, a certain knowledge of sports is required of me if I’m to maintain membership in good standing in the Guy Club.

My problem these days is this: Summer is here and I should be paying at least a bit of attention to my city’s baseball team, the Seattle Mariners. Unfortunately the Mariners so far have a record of 11-17 and have lost their last six straight games. Sports might be a good form of escapism but when one’s team is as hapless as mine, it becomes necessary to escape the escapism.

Thus (and I'd appreciate it if you don't tell the guys)...uh...I’ve become a bird watcher. There are hummingbirds at a feeder that Leah has hung in a tree outside our living room window and when I have a few free minutes I go outside and watch the aerial show. Only as big as my thumb, the hummers eat like pigs. They dart and dash about like laser beams, intent on feeding, but I've been surprised to see how often the hummers are playing offensive defense, simply trying to keep their brethren from feeding. The pictures I’ve shot of the hummers kind of make them appear to be beautiful, winged miracles of nature -- which they are -- and I’d like to be able to write something here about the hummingbirds being gentle and peaceful creatures.

The truth is that they’re the most aggressive dudes you’ll ever see.

Zzzsssdt: One flashes this way heading for the feeder. Zzzsssdt: Another flashes in, as if to say “that nectar is mine, sucka.”

It occurred to me yesterday after the Mariners lost 8-0 to Tampa Bay that maybe it’s my Guy Club duty to invite the city’s Boys of Summer out to my place to watch hummingbirds (for inspiration, you know?) We can scratch and spit and maybe the team can have a Man Chat about competitiveness.