I am driving west on US 20 on Thursday afternoon. I turn right on our road, County Road 23. As I round the corner blazing color catches my eye. To my left, right on the corner of these two roads, is a stunning peacock framed in pure white snow. Can you imagine! I stop my truck right there.
The peacock is an unvelievable combination of color and grace. It's bright peacock blue head and neck are irridescent in the light. It wears a gracefully curved crown of topnotch feathers, bending forward toward its beak and framing its black face and white eye patch. It's back is varigated yellow green smooth feathers. On each side are folded white and black bespeckled wings. The green yellow, black and white delicacies of feathers blend into its long, long, full tail of plumes that culminate in rainbow eyes of chartreuse green, rimming orange and eyes of bright yellow, gracefully trailing a good three feet beyond its body on the white, white snow. This magnficent creature just stands and looks at me. I hold my breath. The I quickly regret not packing my camera for the day.
Ah! Home is one mile from here. I decide to step on the gas. I scoot home, grab my camera, and dash to the corner, parking my truck just around the curve on the side of 20. But where is the peacock?
It is not nearly so vibrant where it hides now, amid the low hanging branches of the brush about ten feet from the road. How to get the best shot? I walk now from angle to angle. I stoop. I look for the angle of the sun. I move a bit closer, and a bit closer as the nervous peacock chicken walks away, further into the shadoes of the brush. One shot. Rotten. Nmber two. A bit better. Two more steps nearer I slowly creep and then the peacock takes flight. I see it spread its wings and trail its beautiful tail as it flies deeper into the brushy wood and nearer to frozen wetland. Shucks! I wanted to catch it! I wanted a good photo.
But a new layer of awareness comes in. My adrenaline begins to abate. Where did this peacock come from? Can it survive in the snow and ice? And how could it find its way home? Most importantly, have I contributed to its demise by hunting it with my lens, with my need to "catch it" so I could proudly share its beauty with you? Bounty hunter! Did I think more about love for ME or love for this neighbor?
I remember: Once years ago, when we first moved to this road, I saw another spectacle at this corner. It was early spring. The small wetland to the north of the road was just starting to green. And there, standing in the shallows, was a stunning white egret! It was tall, graceful, and unlike any other bird I had ever seen in this place. Had some storm driven it off course? Could it survive here, probably too far north and too cold? How could it find its way home? I never had a photo of this white sentry of a bird. I think that has preserved is preciousness and mystique.
For years in the spring I would glance at this wetland, hoping to see an egret once more.
Could I have not let this peacock be -- a photo of the mind and heart?
For days, since Thursday, I search the corner, the brush, the woods and the frozen wetland for a sign of the peacock. Now I want to save it! Randy says that coyotes have surely found it by now. Ah! Ah! Spectacular, vibrant beauty. Gift. Gone. Yet held quite fully and vividly in the mind, if not in the photo.
One bird can do so much. And one photographer.
No comments:
Post a Comment