Every winter at The Refuge, snowy owls come down from the Arctic to live in the Great Marsh. With them comes all manner of humanity with expensive, camo-covered cameras and even more expensive camo-covered lenses hoping to get a shot of a novel visitor.
Limited parking fills up. Roads become blocked by people stopping their vehicles in the middle of the everything to chat with fellow photographers. The Refuge can feel more like Target when they have a big sale than a Refuge.. But ahhhh... since it is still theoretically winter.. there are days like the last couple when The Refuge gets cleared by falling temperatures and gale force winds. Big cameras with even bigger lenses which have to be mounted on tripods simply don't work in a lot of wind.. They get buffeted too much to get good images.. I tell you it was like Sister Wind had had enough and decided to come and wipe the place clean - if only for a while. A few pilgrims remained to walk about, leaning into Sister Wind's frozen breath, and as long as they had skin protection and warm clothes, those were two glorious days.. |
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