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No Wake
My subjects were the floats and mooring lines about four hundred feet from my perch. As the fog loosened its grip on the middle distance of open water, faint outlines emerged. First the floats, then two large dark silhouettes perched on spring rods. Then the pilings, a green heron and two black-crowned herons standing stoically in the gloom. An osprey glided in. A few alert gulls shifted their stance, waiting like commuters on a train platform. An egret stood still as white marble.
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As I waited, I thought about the mystery of different lives – the birds and us – living on the shore in parallel existences. Do we live the same reality, or do we experience this foggy morning differently, from different perspectives? One hundred seventy years ago, Schopenhauer observed that man takes the limits of his field of vision for the boundaries of the world. It would be reasonable to think that the birds’ perspective of their world this morning was narrowed by the fog, too.
This thought is what motivated me out of my warm bed and into the sodden fog reaches of the harbor to stand and wait silently for the sun to evaporate the fog. Part of me wondered if the birds’ existence expanded in man’s absence for a few hours of freedom from our intrusion into their world. Were their lives better in our absence? Or just different? My hoped-for insight into their behavior during those fleeting moments as the veil lifted was coming. I could see two lengths of dock sections -- about forty feet. It wouldn’t be long now.
My subjects were the floats and mooring lines about four hundred feet from my perch on the northernmost dock in the harbor. Gradually, as the fog loosened its grip on me and the middle distance of open water, faint outlines emerged. First the floats, then two large dark silhouettes perched on spring rods, which themselves were not yet discernible. Then the pilings and the sign on one that read “NO WAKE.” Then a green heron and two black-crowned herons standing stoically in the gloom came into view. An osprey glided into the scene and displaced one of the silhouettes. A few alert gulls shifted their stance, waiting like commuters on a train platform. An egret stood still as white marble on the third and last float. They were all quiet in the morning stillness, competitors apparently content to wait as a group for daylight. I bracketed and captured multiples of each setting to compensate for the rising bird activity as the scene brightened. My camera’s shutter was muted, yet its sound surely carried across the water to their alert senses.
