Nature's Reward

It was cold. I had just spent an hour trudging along the south Greenway, near the wetlands and the Sycamore Apartments, without much to see. Some pretty frost that hadn't yet burned off in the early morning sun. A few chickadees and a downy woodpecker, and way across the wetlands I could just make out one of the bald eagles silhouetted in a snag.

I normally walk or bike the length of the trail when I am taking pictures but this lazy morning I drove down, past the two roundabouts on Sycamore and into the parking lot of the apartments. The sun was shining, but it was still cold enough that my fingertips grew numb inside my gloves. Crunching over frozen grass, I flushed a few pheasants (too quick for my camera) and caught a glimpse of a deer fleeing my approach far ahead. I am not as stealthy as I like to hope.

Heading north, towards home, I decided to try my luck at the northern end of the trail, along the north-south segment lined with trees that normally resounded with the taptaptap of woodpeckers. I parked at the end of the new eastward extension of Dickenson and paused at the trail intersection nearby, taking a few desultory shots of the starlings that always hang about in the snags at the edge of the residential neighborhood.

Looking south along the trail, it was dim and quiet. It was still early, so the sun would be behind any birds I tried to shoot. I was ready to just call it a day and head home. But remember the great horned owl you saw there last spring? Yeah, sure. That was a neat surprise. And that little trio of deer you saw a couple weeks ago, down by the sculpture? Yes, yes, also neat. I suppose I can just walk the quarter-mile down to the sculpture and back.

 Not two steps later, I freeze. There was a freaking bald eagle sitting low in a tree, just at the edge of the neighborhood. It was there throughout my silly internal debate about whether it would be worthwhile to haul my chilled carcass along the trail for another ten minutes. After I took a few shots, I debated whether to proceed (and certainly flush it from its perch) or retreat, happy with the blessing that nature bestowed on my cold-be-damned bravado. Lucky for me, the eagle decided that even at that distance I was a little too close for comfort and dropped from its perch, soaring westward with a few strong wingbeats.

I proceeded. Through the woods I could barely see two deer, big and little, at the edge of the clearing opposite. There were bluejays and woodpeckers, chickadees and cardinals. A trio of chubby mourning doves snoozing high up in the sun, feathers fluffed luxuriously.

Nature doesn't disappoint. It can't, because it doesn't owe us anything; we have no right to expect anything from nature. Every time we go out looking for birds, or flowers, or pretty clouds, there is no guarantee that we will find what we seek. But once in a while, we find much more than we were looking for.