Shining Light on the Prairie – Summer, Part 1

Our chill and desperately dry spring hung tough well into June.

Happily, native prairie life has about 10,000 years of learning how to deal with even unusual duress.

We reached extreme levels of drought. Growth was appropriately sparce. Pollinator populations appeared anything but robust.

Despite knowing full well how resilient this landscape is and though we'd purposefully nurtured ours to meet the challenge, I worried. Because that's what humans do.

Then during late June into July, intermittent deluges came.

Occasionally, things took a damned near biblical turn. Like the eight inches of rain that pummeled the land over the course of a single day.

That's not optimal. No prairie can suck all that water up so fast. Most of the precious elixir just washed straight away. All along, we stayed perversely dry.

Then life burst upon the prairie much the same as ever. A day late maybe…

…but hardly a dollar short.

And suddenly, as if by magic, the summer season turned typically lush and all the usual suspects settled in to feast.

It ended up being a banner year for local monarchs. As many as seven at a time, some days. Possibly, I've not seen so many in one place for decades.

Not saying the monarch's 'saved' or anything like it, anecdotal evidence too often isn't worth the paper it's no longer printed on. But perhaps the swamp milkweed I introduced last summer had something to do with that.

Who can say for sure, save the monarch?

Come August, the green obscurity of abundance settled in.

Rummaging through the understory, I even found some fungus. First of the year.

After that, the summer season just seemed to fly.

35 mm Artifacts – Water is Life

Born to a much degraded and long maligned midwestern prairie, I didn't know jack from wilderness.

Then when still but a kid, we took a family vacation to visit maternal family on the Gogebic Range, along the Superior Basin.

I saw my first footloose bear where a wild rushing river pours unfettered into a great freshwater sea. They were cubs, like me. On perhaps a different river, a massive rainbow trout leapt into the air and for a moment, glistened like sunlight. I can still sort of see it.

One evening while on our way to fabled fresh fish dinner, a locked & loaded momma skunk stopped traffic in all directions with only the power of suggestion. When all the cute little skunk babies were safely across, she let us pass.

Then there were those northern lights, for one one night only, dancing beyond the bedroom window.

What the hell. A sky!

In situ, I understood the leftover bits of truly awesome oak savannah I'd explored all my short life and so dearly loved weren't actually 'the woods.'

It took just a few short days in wonderland to know.

As you'll imagine, I was pretty well spoiled for scraggly prairie remnants after that.

Next time I met Superior was on the cusp of adulthood, traveling with Heather. During that trip, I learned for certain where I belonged.

Working wild water with 35mm film is how I taught myself to selectively see the natural world as proscribed by a proscenium stage, captured through a selective lens.

Shooting 35mm transparency taught me film's limitations. I pushed at those, always.

Occasionally even failures beguiled. In the field that's mostly due to the splendor of the moment, not any particular skillset…

The best thing about working wild waters was that the work drew me to them during sublimely quiet times.

On that field you learn to accept what you get and better luck next time, as needed.

There's no finer time to be alone in the woods at water's edge than twice daily.

The second best thing is that wild water generally provides for an inclusive image, as the entire body of wild life is so well represented in and around it.

Sure, sometimes you can get away with shooting 'just' water.

But as a rule, some visual frame of reference is needed to keep the viewer anchored in a recognizable landscape.

Even when what's called "the vanishing point" really does.

My love of wild water led me to canoes. As I grew comfortable in those, my by then ancient Nikon F accompanied me.

Truth is it's a whole different viewpoint out there. Where sometimes even during the best golden hour, no gold's found and you don't want any anyway.

It was Boy Scouts first taught me to be prepared. But being a field photographer sure reinforced the adage. And in a canoe, you never can know who'll drop by.

Out there, you're the intruder. But when you're quiet and respectful, mutual curiosity sometimes prevails.

Plus, the loon's eye perspective often provides the best lakeside view.

About the image below, a dear friend once told me 'That's it right there. The Northwoods in a nutshell.'

Or words to that effect.

In any event, over time while wielding my trusty Nikons, I made myself a fair to decent 35mm landscape photographer.

The best of my young self typically has water of some sort in it.

Yet I grew increasingly dissatisfied with the results.

In film, size really did matter. Digital capture too, but that's another matter for a different time.

The deeper I dug into Superior's Northwoods, the more I knew if I wanted to amount to anything as a fine art field photographer, I'd have to seriously up my game.

Truth is, even the best 35mm transparency was akin to shooting with toy film. And there were precious few avenues to achieve creative differentiation when working the wild world with that.

There were also millions of 35mm landscape shooters out there. Every snap shooter's ever lived shoots those, then and now. After a while, we've seen it all.

Years of fieldwork combined with commercial lab expertise meant I understood both the limitations and the possibilities of my chosen medium as well or better than most.

By the time I pushed the final roll of 35mm chrome through my trusty Nikon N90s, I'd also learned to see.

That last day found me caught between hard rock and an even harder place.

Things had to change.

Shining Light on the Prairie - Summer Solstice

Love in the time of drought...

I'd given up trying to capture hummingbird moths on the wing. Geez they're fast. Like my wildlife work back when, I'm simply not geared for the task.

Then one spring evening I spotted what looked like a dead leaf caught in wavering tallgrass. Closer inspection revealed it wasn't that at all.

Instead, it was a glimpse into intimacy not commonly seen.

And a splendid visual gift, as it turned out.

Plus, now I need never again chase hummingbird moths with a lens. And am remined of why I treasure tallgrass.

Especially the rich diversity of life the seeming mess typically obscures.

Notably chill and no more than damp through early spring, only the lupine actually liked that.

After scant snowfall during winter, sopping spring rains never did arrive.

With May, it grew near desperate dry on the prairie.

Yet tallgrass and oak savanna are well equipped to deal with that stress.

This past spring, like every, had its opportunities.

Maybe one had to look a little closer, is all.

That's okay, I'm fair good at it.

Now and then, even substandard imagery admirably serves.

As on the bright morning when out from tallgrass new life emerged to stare me straight in the face.

Last thing in the world I wanted to do, was return that gaze primarily through an artificial lens.

The longest day of this year dawns hot, mired in technically severe drought.

On the prairie clear skies run hazy. The edge times most days blaze hunter's orange. All courtesy of far-off Canadian forests, burning.

Lupine are gone to seed. Milkweed's soon to burst. Great black wasps and monarchs will follow. Warmer now than it's been, I expect this week our first of the year fireflies will dance at dusk.

So welcome summer. When the living's said to be easy.

Here's hoping that's true.

#summersolstice #hummingbirdmoth