May 21, 2024

Reignited

It was Tuesday morning, and I was relieved to hear that my wife had a great night’s sleep and woke up feeling rested. We sipped coffee together, getting mentally prepared for the morning. Today, my wife would leave for Cary and then stay there for the rest of the week. That was a little sad. She had a rotation exam on Friday. That was a little scary. On Friday evening, she would arrive home, ending the need for extended stays away from the house for the rest of her schooling. That was unbelievable. I kissed my wife; we said our goodbyes, and then she drove off for the week.

I took some time to do a writing session. Sessions usually comprised writing 1200 words, or four pages. My daily goal was 1800 words, where I completed additional writing pieces after finishing my journal entries. After writing, I changed clothes, strapped on my cameras, and headed out the front door and into the woods.

The day was sunny, but the forest was dimly lit. The ground was still wet from the rain that fell several days ago. All the songbirds were out, and I mentally called out the name of each bird I heard, identifying them by their distinctive songs. There were thin spiderwebs strewn between trees that glinted in the sun as I walked past. The air felt cool and smelled of green pine needles and sap.

Along the trail, I stopped to listen to a boisterous male cardinal that was perched high in an elm tree. The bird’s loud song sounded just like lasers, reminding me of the stormtroopers in a Star Wars movie, or some bad eighties techno music. I stopped to record the sound with my phone and later shared it on social media under the title Forest Lasers.

As I walked down a hill that leads to the creek, I saw several deer tracks cut deep into the mud. The deer’s footing slipped as it walked down the decline, resulting in smeared tracks. The frogs were still awake and singing loudly even though the sun was up. This was the second day I noticed this behavior. 

This morning, I visited Beaver Tooth Rock for the first time in a while. While this large boulder was a prime sitting spot for photography during the winter, the area below the rock was now overgrown. The grasses were so high and brush so thick, that I couldn’t really see anything from the area. Still, the location was great when I wanted a secluded place to sit down and rest. The trail camera near the rock showed several raccoons and opossums passing through the area. There was also one video of a black, long-haired cat. This was the same cat that showed up on a trail camera last week on the west side of the property.

When I climbed up on Beaver Tooth Rock, I could hear a strange, almost indescribable noise. It sounded like the buzzing of a bee’s or hummingbird’s wings, except that it was extraordinarily loud. It was like my drone when I hit the controls to make it suddenly climb or turn. The noise was coming from somewhere in front of me, but the vegetation was too dense to see past it.

I couldn’t tell if the noise was being made by a bird’s wings or waterfowl’s call. I suppose it could have been a frog making some type of new sound. Whatever it was, it sounded eery. I recorded the noise with my phone, but I could never make out what made the buzzing sounds.

When I got back home, I got undressed, checked for ticks, and then jumped in the shower to get ready for work. Welcome to life in the country. The work day was full of meetings, some planned, others impromptu gatherings to form ad hoc solutions to the work fires that occasionally raged and continuously smoldered.

I ate lunch outside on the back porch while watching the hummingbirds frequent the feeder. It was a beautiful day. Just as I was finishing my meal, the dogs, some inside the house and others outside with me, all began barking loudly. I figured someone was driving up on the property, so I walked down the deck stairs to peek around the corner. To my surprise, there was a young buck, its antlers barely visible, crossing from the pasture to the pine grove. I hadn’t seen a buck in the area at this time of day for several months. I snapped some photographs as the deer disappeared into the grid of pines.

This evening was the monthly meeting for the Wilson Camera Club. As soon as work was over, I made a coffee and gathered my gear, getting ready for the drive into Wilson. This evening, an accomplished landscape photographer from the club was giving a presentation on this photography genre. I loved landscape photography, and shot it often. So, I was pretty eager to learn any new tricks of the trade the presenter could impart.

The presentation was great, and it reminded me of several fundamentals that I had let fall by the wayside. There was also a moment of epiphany when the photographer talked about the relationship between the focal length of a lens and the depth-of-field when taking a picture. Almost every source who spoke or wrote on the topic of depth of field always focused on a lens’ aperture. But the focal length, many times, had a more profound effect on depth-of-field than the aperture, yet nobody was talking about it. I was happy to learn about this point, and it gave me something to ponder, a nugget that would change how I shot landscapes.

After the presentation, I met a couple of photographers from the club who I followed on social media. We talked about cameras and each other’s work, and I left feeling a stronger sense of wanting to perfect my skills. It was as if the club’s expectations were less important to me than my peer’s opinions and views of the work we all did. I arrived home with a stronger commitment to perfect this craft that I loved so much. While my flame for photography burned bright, something changed this evening. I wanted to dig deeper and work harder to master the art of capturing light.

As I exited my car to go inside the house for the night, I saw the bright flashes of firefly tails, and I could hear crickets chirping, and the faint sounds of frogs croaking, their calls traveling all the way from the creek to my ears.