Outdoors Column | Les Winkeler: A fantastic morning in the wild - The Southern
For a few moments last week my life became a walking oxymoron.
After about 30 minutes at Crab Orchard National Wildlife Refuge I had reached a mental state approaching Nirvana. The morning had been magical, I spotted a doe nursing a fawn, something I had never seen before.
It was about an hour after sunrise. The morning was cool with barely a hint of breeze, leaving Crab Orchard Lake with a perfectly flat surface. The day was slightly overcast, giving the lake a soft, almost impressionist feel.
The lighting, the perfectly calm water, accentuated the brilliant colors of a group of wood ducks as they paddled slowly from their duckweed encrusted cover near the shore to open water. The sights and sounds, or lack thereof, left me with an aura of placid contentment I hadn’t felt in some time.
It was as if I had been inserted into a National Geographic documentary when I walked a bit of shoreline near the Wolf Creek Causeway. The outside world was quiet enough that I could hear the chattering of goldfinch and hear the wind whistling through the wings of a great blue heron as it swooped upward to a perch in a pine tree.
It dawned on me at that moment that few people get to experience this quiet. My wife and I had visited the same spot the previous weekend. The area was brimming with human activity, people fishing and picnicking. Seeing people enjoying the outdoors is a wonderful thing, but the human presence overwhelmed nature.
Last week I found myself walking the shore alone. I had just spotted a warbler in an oak tree. My mind was flipping over the Rolodex of mental images of birds, trying to identify the fall migrant. At the same time my eyes were scouring the edge of the rip rap, trying to spot feeding sandpipers before my presence spooked them.
Despite the sandpiper search, my eyes were magically drawn to a great egret sunning in the branches of a cypress tree across the bay. The bird’s sun-drenched plumage created a white hole from which I couldn’t divert my eyes.
Still trying to identify the warbler mentally while on the lookout for sandpipers but looking at an egret, I became aware of a song sparrow incessantly scolding me. Apparently, I had come a little too close for comfort. If that wasn’t enough, the chattering of belted kingfishers strafing the water finally pulled my eyes away from the egret.
Despite still feeling totally relaxed, I was aware my mind was spinning out of control – my mental tachometer was entering the red zone. The informational overload eventually wrenched me back to an in the moment consciousness and I felt like a computer trying to process too many commands at once.
To compensate, I stopped in my tracks, inhaled deeply and allowed myself to drink in the moment once again.
What an amazing dilemma. Nature was throwing so much beauty at me at one time, I wasn’t sure where to focus my attention.
After staring at the great egret for a few moments, I retraced my steps. The song sparrow wasn’t any happier with me now than the first time I passed by. I told the scolding good naturedly and smiled even broader when another great blue heron swept up onto a pine bough.
Walking back to my car, still engrossed in thought, I heard something break the surface of the water. Turning just in time, I saw a ring-billed gull snatch a small fish from the lake.
That life-and-death reality was a perfect way to punctuate the morning.
LES WINKELER is the outdoors writer for The Southern Illinoisan. Contact him at les@winkelerswingsandwildlife.com, on Twitter @LesWinkeler.
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2020-09-25 17:00:00Z
https://thesouthern.com/outdoors/outdoors-column-les-winkeler-a-fantastic-morning-in-the-wild/article_8cb5a448-d822-51f1-ac46-293b85a43f7e.html
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