Just another morning

It was, I believe, zero. As in degrees. It was zero, maybe less. I didn't check. Didn't want to.

But I'd bought a lens, used, via Ebay, when someone from a non-profit took my low ball bid. I'd been looking at what he was offering for some time, a lens with a bit more width, a wide angle that wasn't expensive, but had garnered sweet reviews. So Saturday, I grabbed it, bundled up, and went out.

Some mornings, sheer beauty runs up and leaps into the camera. Saturday morning was not one of those. Dawn came slowly in a wash of gold, but there was nothing to dress it in--just a clear sky and whiff or two of wispy clouds. I'd shot this ancient corn crib a dozen times before, had driven past it double that. But I wanted to try out the lens. 

Whatcha' think? Not bad.

Up closer. Not bad either, the fencing really pretty sharp. Lens wasn't that expensive.

So onward, even though I knew I'd have to be lucky to take a home a real winner. What I'm seeing through that new lens is what I've seen in all kinds of clear-eyed dawns. Still, the jagged branches of prairie cottonwoods are almost promiscuous in their incessant begging. 

They ought to be horror movie backdrops, but somehow, alone on a bare-naked plain, they command respect for their worthy endurance. The fact is, they shouldn't be here. I'm just across the Big Sioux in South Dakota, where the river's handsome shoulders should be nothing but tall-grass prairie. Beaten up by incessant winds as they are, they're a monument to their own endurance. Cold of winter, those frozen arms are crooked and misshapen and  somehow still stunning, even beautiful. Like some wannabe starlets, they want to be shot.

The Big Sioux was waaaaaay higher than I guessed it would be, and there was no shortage of open water, which was a surprise, given how cold it's been in the last few weeks. I expected some eagles, saw none. But deer a'plenty. I'd show you, but it takes me too dumb long to get out the camera. By the time I'm ready to shoot, all that's visible is flashing white tails in the distance.

When that blinding ball of fire finally emerged from the eastern horizon, the riverside cottonwoods will give a shot some character, texture. Meanwhile, the new cheap lens isn't doing bad.

See that color on the snow in the foreground--that's why every man or woman I know who likes landscape photography grabs a camera bag at dawn or dusk, when the sun is King Midas. 

I'm embarrassed to show you this because I got out of the car only two or three times. It was just too cold for old fingers. In no time at all, I can't even shoot--and I got gloves. If I were younger and the temperature hadn't been as unforgiving, I would have stalked these woods a bit and looked for a telling angle. That's the river out there, and it's high--very high--for mid-winter, almost fearfully high. There's a thousand beautiful shots in this stand of cottonwoods, but I stayed in the car, grabbed this one through an open window--road hunting, cheating.

In the woods the only avenue to success is to not think about what's in the camera, not think about the perfect shot, not think about what other people might say about a picture. You're not out there to produce--that's so "white man," you know? I'm only out there to glory in what's so marvelously all around.

I learned to love the wild things from a man who knew the lakeshore woods where I grew up better than anyone--where the deer hung out, all the trails they traveled. Every year he'd buy a licence and head out with his single shot 12-gauge, post someplace utterly familiar to him, some highway where, come dawn, he was sure to see deer. In those later years of his, he never took home a deer because he wasn't out to kill, only to love. He never said that, never had to.

That's what I tell myself to remember, maybe especially on those clean-dawn mornings when I'm just trying out a new wide-angle lens. Just enjoy. 

Just worship in the cottonwoods.