Morning Thanks--South pond

I love the walk. Takes about an hour or so. There's really not much to see, but a couple of weeks ago I took a scythe along and whacked off undergrowth so the path through the trees to the river wasn't a tangle. Don't know if anyone else uses the path, but it just a dream to hike a while and then sit up on the bank and watch the silence.

I took my camera. Don't usually, but I did this time--heavy, cumbersome thing, but I wanted to fool around with the new lens, which isn't new anymore really, been in the case for about a year. Huge, ungainly thing, 100x400, big and heavy, needs to sit on a tripod which I didn't take. 

It's fall. Everything takes on an a burnished autumn tan. There'd be plenty of color, I thought when I snapped that shot above, just not much to shoot at. Still, when you're just looking for beauty, what you find can be amazing.

Here's where I am, standing above or beside a river so tiny it barely merits the name--little more than a creed right now. A couple inches of rain last week swelled this skinny thing a bit, but you can tell its normal size by the color. Generally, the Floyd is more healthy. Right now, it's almost pathetically scrawny.

The light was gorgeous. What good light does for photography goes far beyond thanks. There isn't much color arising from the prairie this time of year--some late-term goldenrod and, here and there, a bouquet of white astors; but mostly it's just a tangle all around. Still, the abundant grace of a lavishing sun can turn almost miraculously turn anything into gold.

Once I got to the river, it became clear that the most interesting shots were going to be at its scrawny edge. Honestly, there's nothing remarkable about what's here--a dead branch in the languid flow of the Floyd. No matter--it's something remarkable, even beautiful. 

Who'd a thunk this single yellow leaf could sing? 

I sat there awhile, hoping someone would visit, when sure enough, just down the river, a cormorant showed up. Honestly, I couldn't have caught him without that beast of a lens, so when he showed up I was thrilled I lugged the thing along. Against the technicolor bank, he's sheer blessing.

I had all 400mm out there to get him. He wasn't close, and I wasn't moving. But somehow, he--or she--got into her head that she'd had enough, so she took off. I kept snapping.

I grabbed a couple more shots from the bank, then snapped what I could find on my way out of the woods, and started on my homeward way.

Back up on the prairie, I stopped for milkweed because the mass of seedlings the pods produce every October are just beginning to be born. Very few images of prairie life are as singularly delicate as a fluff of milkweed seedlings. Don't be fooled: they're mightily fecund. Next year, there'll be more to keep the monarchs happy.

And then there's this one, a Halloween.

She's right, Dorthea Lange: "A camera teaches you how to see without a camera." It's just amazing what's there on a sunny afternoon in little more than a field of grass beside a languishing river. 

Beauty is a blessed gift for which, this Tuesday morning, I'm thankful.