Monthly Archives: October 2015

Quartering Into The Rising Sun

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It was a brisk frosty morning at Bosque del Apache when the sun got to the point where  the Snow geese began to rise up into the air and head for their feeding grounds. Brisk was nearly a misnomer as brisk was about 27-28 degrees with a wind coming out of the Southeast at about 25 miles per hour. This probably felt like a mild spring day for the Snow geese but it felt pretty damn brisk for the photographers. Hiking or jogging or moving quickly in these conditions lessened the feeling of being cold, but standing in one place not moving, waiting for the action to start so you could go to work, was what some might call a miserable experience.

They say that you need to dress for the cold in order to be comfortable in conditions like this. Wearing both your 800 count down coats, and sorrels stuffed with heating pads and a hat a Russian would be proud to wear, made it just possible to stand out there for the two or three hours needed to catch the morning flight schedule of the Snow geese and the Sandhill cranes. Drinking several thermos’ of boiling hot tea helped a little. There was many a longing glance cast back at the vehicle with its heater and the promise of warmth, but the deal was you needed to stand there because even if you so much as looked away at the wrong moment you could miss the shot of the trip. Yes we know there is a certain amount of masochism involved in this profession. Yes we know we brought this on ourselves, yes we know that all you had to do was turn around and walk back to the truck and this would all be over. But that would be like a Seal candidate ringing the bell. It meant failure and for those diehards among us, that is not acceptable. So we stamp our feet, bitch to each other about how cold it is, and curse the birds for not hurrying this business up, and then it happens.

One by one the Sandhills take off, then the Snow geese rise en masse with a fluttering roar as thousands of wings beat together lifting them skyward, their calls to each other a deafening cacophony of sound, and just like that the big part of the business of shooting them is over. That’s when the newbies, and those who came for just that portion of the morning flight pack up and gratefully head to the warmth of their vehicles. There is usually some good-hearted banter between those that are leaving and the few of us that stay for that extra shot or two. “What, You didn’t get enough pictures yet?” “Cold enough?” “Forget where your car is?” “Feet froze to the ground?” Um, it’s over, dude, go home.” “I’m going for breakfast, Eggs, potatoes, sausage and bacon, some toast and really hot coffee. What are you going to do?”

But you been here before and this isn’t your first rodeo. You know that some of the best shots of all are still possible as the stragglers leave, one by one. The light is still good. Better in fact for the kind of shots left to take. Like this one of a lone Snow goose quartering into the rising sun as it hurries to catch up with its flock. The sun hits it full on, making the white feathers on its head and breast glow in the early morning light. Showing the single-minded determination to do what it was born to do. A perfect example of the grace and power of its species.

Now you can go back to the truck. Now you can turn the heater up to the fattest part of the red line that says hot. And you can go find that last guy who taunted you with breakfast. Maybe you can even talk into buying or you’ll tell everyone what a wimp he was for leaving early.

Night Comes To The Blackfeet Camp

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This post has been moved to OpenChutes.com. All future postings of Powwows, Indian Relay Races, Rodeos and Rendezvous will be posted there from now on exclusively. So if you’re looking for new images and posts for all those events attended this year, plus all the old posts posted on BigShotsNow.com check out OpenChutes.com. See you there!

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The day has been blisteringly hot. Smoke from the western forest fires has been drifting past the camp, sometimes so thick you felt like you were next to the flames. There was some relief from the heat as the sun began its journey past the horizon but not that much. There was no relief from the smoke.

As you looked about the camp the lodges began to fade to black, the lodge poles standing out in stark relief against the sky. But the sky. How beautiful was the sky. If it hadn’t been the result of the massive catastrophe that the smoke represented the resulting colors caused by the sunlight’s passage through it would have been the most beautiful thing you’d ever seen. It was still gorgeous but you knew in the back of your mind this sunset wouldn’t have been this intense if it hadn’t been for the smoke.

However reality is what is happening right now. These events are real. The sun setting, the smoke, the camp, the dancing, everything is real. You might wish the smoke wasn’t there. You might wish the heat was less, but it isn’t and this what you have to accept as an observer and participant in the life that is happening  around you right now. To get the most out of life embrace the time you’re in. Savor every moment because this experience will not come again.

A Portrait Of A Man In Stone

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There have been many, many requests, well at least five, asking for more information about The Director. Who is this shadowy figure that controls the enormous empire that is The Institute? What does he look like? Is he nice? Does he talk or walk funny? Is he an American? Does he support the Women’s movement and their right to bear arms and/or children? Sometimes at the same time? Is he incredibly wealthy and overly generous? Does he like women who look like Christina Hendricks? Is he “LikesEmHot&Slow” on page number 300 of ‘Dating For Seniors Who Can Still Walk’ website ? Is he really as handsome, suave and debonair as they say? And of course the most commonly asked question, When can we see his picture?

Well all we can tell you is that The Director does not grant interviews. He is a very private person preferring to do his work behind the scenes, as it were, and so we cannot answer those questions. He also does not send out glossy, autographed 8×10 photos of himself suitable for framing, for 25.00 each plus postage and handling.

He did consent however to provide one image that he had done while he was tooling around Europe, or what is now known as the EU, by the famed sculptor Phenofantabulo, a stuttering, semi-literate Italian who was as crazy as an outhouse rat but a savant when it came to capturing the likeness of someone in stone. This image became so popular in Venice, a suburb of Italy, that you can still find it gracing the bottom of the many abutments that hold up Venice’s bridges. There you can see his eternal gaze fixed steadily on the waters of the canals as they slosh back and forth sluggishly before emptying into the Bay of Fundy or whatever they call that bay by Venice. The Director has a fondness for this image as he often will be found staring vacantly into any moving stream of water nearby, and as he is being guided back to The Institute will say “Did you see that?”  Sometimes he will say it more than once. It’s best just to agree with him and say “Yes, yes we did.”

For those of you clamoring to see what The Director looks like the portrait above will have to suffice. Although we did mange to squirrel away a few hundred of his regular pictures we got off his driver’s license when he was down staring at the river. So the 25.00 dollar offer still stands. Let us know if you want one.

Shadows In The Darkness

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When you’re deep underground things change. Your perception changes. What would normally be a path of sand leading you forward can become a river of dreams. Each dream a flash of light moving together, mixing, forming even better dreams as they tumble forward to wherever dreams go. The lightest of them must be happy dreams, the darkest, nightmares. They become the shadows in the darkness.

They congregate near the edges of the flow, where the stream is slowest, forming larger and more frightening dreams, always looking for the deepest shadows and the darkest places to stay. To hold on. This isn’t like being up above ground where the morning can come and save you from the terror. Here the dreams can last as long as they want to. Or as long as you allow them to.

When you’re deep underground things change. Dreams become real, both good and bad. You can not help but visit the stream of dreams, and be drawn into its flow, just try and stay away from the edges.

On The Edge

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Many of you know if you read the blog often enough and every day is not often enough, that we have a mental health unit here at The Institute where we treat any and all who come weeping or wailing, or in a murderous rage, or the frustrated, or the halt and the lame, or the paranoid, lying, cheating, addle-pated terminally nutso citizens that frequent the grounds. And if you didn’t know that now, now you do.

Normally we have a full staff of defrocked Psychologists, Psychiatrists and psyche strikers or what we call wannabes to handle the surprisingly large number of patients that show up on our doorstep. But it seems that we are short of them at the moment. All we have on hand is a slightly strange shrink that just happens to be undergoing his weekly shock treatments so he is MIA just when we need him the most. This is the time of change, a time when if there are going to be any problems they will appear. In fact it will rain problems and the deluge will be biblical. And with it becoming Fall and all, what with migrations taking place, worries about the winter’s food supply for the layovers, and that ever present topic of outright desertion by ones mate who just flew off in the middle of the night, the clinic is full to overflowing. We’ve had to resort to deckside therapy as we can’t squeeze one more patient inside.

When the main shrink is here he would normally handle this patient but due to the fact that he is often discombobulated, and doesn’t know whether he walked to work or wound his watch for several weeks after each treatment, it falls on The Director to step in and assume some of his duties. Thus The Director was up at bat when this Canyon wren flew in and began a core dump of every problem she had ever had, real or imaginary, and that her life was a living hell and what were we going to do about it.

We have had experience with this young wren before and always found her to be excitable and quick to assume the worst even when the worst was happening. In fact there were marital problems in her relationships with the various male wrens she associated with before and she was seen by our resident clinician who said ” Nope, She’s just nuts. Can’t do much with her.” Her behavior was documented in the following post http://www.bigshotsnow.com/late-for-dinner/  way back in May of 2013. It seems her tolerance level has not improved since then.

But as is usually the case, letting her squeak and screech in her shrill little voice, and flutter her wings until she had it all out there was helpful. The main problem was that her mate had left early on the migration, simply saying he’d see her down there, which was the root of her angst as she didn’t know where down there was. Fortunately our case worker had been talking to the male wren who stated he just needed some quiet time and left a note for our patient saying where down there was. After finding that out and taking about a million ‘ludes to calm her down she went back and started packing to leave. Wouldn’t it be great if all problems were solved that easy.

Captive Beauty – Bengal Tiger

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Every once in a while we bring you an image from our Captive Beauty series. This is one of those images. Bengal tigers are in a class all their own when it comes to poise, grace and elegance. They are one of the few animals that will make eye contact with you and hold it until You look a way. We have long had a fascination for the large predator cats and tigers are at the top of the list.

If you are a long time reader of the blog you will have seen the other posts in this ongoing series. If you haven’t, simply enter Captive Beauty in the search box at the top of the page and you will see the previous posts. As usual this is not an opportunity to weigh the pro’s and con’s of animals that are no longer free. Instead it is an opportunity to see their natural beauty and perhaps reacquaint yourself with how fantastic the animal life in our world is. What you chose to do with that information is up to you.

 

The Fall Terminator Line

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Every Fall the terminator line, that line that separates day from night, the one that can be seen moving across the face of the Earth from outer space, ushers in the changing of the season from Summer to Fall. The terminator line is usually thought of as being connected to the day/night cycle but our observers at the Observatory here at The Institute have determined that it is also connected to the changing of the seasons. Just as everyday the terminator races across the earth bringing night to some, and on the other side of the line, day to others, the terminator line also separates Summer from Fall.

As most people are busy watching football, playing video games, or doing inside stuff, they don’t notice this phenomenon. But the animals do. Take this mother Grizzly and her cubs for instance. They are right smack dab on the terminator line as it rushes toward them. You can see the difference between Fall and Summer in the meadow they’re in. On the top side of the line the grass has already turned golden on its way to being brown for the winter. On the lower side of line you can still see the grass is green and chewable. Mother is keeping the family on the summer side of the line as long as she can because they need to eat right up to the point where they enter the den.

The cubs always playful and boisterous are now quiet and still, hiding their heads in the grass, just below and to the left of Mom. We can’t hear the sound of the advancing terminator, but the bears can and it is terrifying to the young ones. We set up microphones that are able to pick up the UV layers of sound that are out of our hearing range and it was totally freaking scary. Two of our technicians fainted and had to be dragged back to the research vehicle where the Heimlicher procedure was performed along with liberal use of the company defibrillator.

Apparently the sound is similar to that of running along beneath the underbelly of a 747 as it reaches takeoff velocity. There is also a crackling sound as the Fall side of the terminator incinerates the foliage and causes all the grass to wilt and die screaming and all the colors rush out to the extremities of the trees and bushes. Where they then leap off on the leaves and catapult themselves into oblivion just to get away from the noise. That’s enough to scare any bear cub. Mother is used to it after being through it many times but nothing reassures the cubs like living through it once. It won’t be long and the terminator will pass over them at nearly warp speed leaving the little family dazed and confused, wondering if they had been snake bit or struck by lightning, as they wander dizzily around the meadow. But that soon passes.

It is rare to catch an animal family actually working the terminator line, but we did and that’s why *The Institute has the reputation for the unusual, strange, and freaky that we do. Some have wondered if we’re not the Supermarket tabloid of the science world. Although we appreciate the compliment we are simply The Institute, the worlds best Institute for science and other cool stuff there is.

If any of you out there can hear above 80,000 kHz then there is a good chance you might be able to hear the terminator coming. If so and you haven’t heard it before, try and maintain your composure so you don’t start a panic. Also stay way back from any bear family you might encounter. Mother grizzly may have been through this before but she is still a grizzly and a single mom. No matter how many times she’s been through it, it still makes her itchy and she is likely to snap at you if you get too close. This is a dicey time to have any sort of interaction with her. Just stay back. Let’s just be glad this terminator business only happens a few times a year.

* Note: For those of you unfamiliar with The Institute and what it does, please see the page labeled The Institute on the Menu Bar above. That should explain everything. You shouldn’t have one single question remaining regarding The Institute after reading it. None. For those of you favored few who already know about the Institute, Nevermind. Return to your daily activities. Thank you for your support.