Monday, February 15, 2010 - Bosque Birdwatchers RV Park, San Antonio NM
< previous day | archives | next day >
Illuminated, Sandhill Crane, Bosque National Wildlife Refuge, San Antonio NM, February 15, 2010
I got one!
Getting interesting shots of these magnificent cranes in flight leaving the roost in the early morning light has turned into quite a project. Many many thousands of shots later I'm beginning to see the light - how positioning myself to catch the cranes leaving the roost in just the right light from just the right angle and firing away - taking hundreds of shots - can yield a satisfying one once in a while. What fun! And what an honor and privilege it is that the cranes will let all of us out here on a frosty morning to get so so close to their roost and flight path.
Night camp
Site 16 - Bosque Bird Watcher's RV Park, San Antonio NM
- This is a basic, small Mom & Pop RV Park with full hookups.
- Verizon cell phone and Broadband service are available here with a strong signal.
- Locate Bosque Bird Watcher's RV Park on my Night Camps map
- Click for Google street view
- Check the weather in San Antonio NM
It was the Crickets
Now then: it isn't so much that one way of dying beats another, though that certainly is the case, but rather that when you KNOW the jig could be up any second or any decade -- it's the awareness that's important -- that just might make a difference. I'm like everybody else, I have these moments and then forget, lapsing back into "immortality." But there was a thing that happened in my back yard maybe 18 months before we split from Maryland that hit me as hard as seeing their president drop dead on stage must have hit those graduating seniors.
It was the crickets. I'd gone outside one warm fall evening to shut the garage door and suddenly realized I couldn't hear the crickets! No wait, I could, but only if I turned my head a certain way. Oh God, oh no: I had almost no high-frequency hearing in my right ear, or was it my left? That doesn't matter. The point is, a part of me had shut down permanently. No, it hadn't happened suddenly, but I had finally noticed, and that was hard to take. I'd never again hear crickets like I once had. Never! I walked back to the house in tears. All right, I'm sensitive. But I understood at once what all this meant.