Friday Ramble - Kingfisher Days

It goes without saying that I spend many of my summer hours wandering around and taking photos of things. The eastern Ontario highlands are a treasure trove in all seasons, and I feel fortunate to be there and taking it all in, especially in summer when the world is green and gold and full of wild music. It would be rude not to pay attention and say thanks to the Old Wild Mother once in a while.

There are wonders everywhere: dragonflies, butterflies and moths, bumbles and wasps, birds, puddles, trees, orchids and wildflowers, fields of waving grain, meandering rivers, poppies, lilies and lupins gone wild and doing their own untrammeled thing in roadside ditches.

I spend hours crawling about in the woods on all fours with a macro lens on the camera, “doing” ferns, mosses, lichens, bugs, salamanders and little green frogs. Every tump, stump, leafy alcove and stone has wonders to share. Is it difficult to get back to a standing position afterward? Oh yes, but I do it anyway. 

Other hours are spent at the lake capturing loons floating on the water at sunset, herons motionless in the shallows, kingfishers hunting the last small meal of the day. Once in a while, an otter turns up and watches me from the water for a while,  occasionally displaying the bright red inside of its mouth and a set of wicked teeth. Curious critters, otters. The ones at the lake are all called Portly.

Birds, otters and fabulous sunsets, there is always something to see. These are kingfisher days, times out of time, full of magic and an elusive something I am always reaching toward and can't quite find a word or image for. When I arrive home, dusty, sweaty and speckled with leaf dust, I look at everything, but the images make me groan, so I archive them on a DVD and think no more of it.

Years later, when I am searching for an image for something or other, I pull out a DVD of long ago captures and discover to my astonishment that it holds treasures. Wonder of wonders, some of the images are not too bad at all. I remember when they were taken, my soulmate and Beau (or Cassie or Spencer) and I together out in the woods or on the shore at the lake, royally chewed by bugs and happy as clams.

My apologies to Susan Coyne for borrowing the title of her memoir (Kingfisher Days) for this morning's post. Her creation is a gem, and I am reading it again.