Wildlife sightings inspire awe

Page 5

I have been photographing wildlife lately. The picture shown was taken with a zoom lens from about 400 yards. It?s a picture of an elk taken in Alberta. Several years ago, my wife and the two smallest kids were in Jasper, Alberta. There was so much to photograph during our trip through the mountains. I hardly knew where to look first!

I am grateful to the Creator for giving me these good eyes. I am always seeing wildlife long before anyone else does. I have spotted moose on a bright snowy day. The snow was coming down hard. When the moose don?t move, it?s very hard to see them. I guess it?s the shapes I see from the distance ? the black against the white snow. Sometimes you can see the sun shinning off the horns. It is amazing what your eyes can do when you focus on learning about the bush.

Driving down a snowy road I can spot rabbits because of their off-white color. They are not hard to spot at all if you have the vision. I am not the only one who can do this. I can be driving along, looking straight ahead of me, but I see that off-white color out of the corner of my eye. It?s a rabbit!

Prairie chickens are really easy to spot in the winter. But in the fall, it?s not easy. I took photos of some chickens and some people can?t even see the chickens when they are looking at the photographs. You can walk right by a chicken in the bush and not even know. The chickens won?t move. They stay perfectly still.

My boys walk right past them all the time. Sometimes they make me laugh. They are looking so hard for the chicken and it?s right in front of them.

One time, I was hunting with my son, and I saw a chicken across a little field. I told my son to crawl to them like a dog. I took my video camera out and started filming him as he crawled toward them. As he got to the chickens, they stayed right there, not moving. He shot at them and missed both of them. The boys and I like to have a supply of prairie chickens for feasts and the old people. But not that day. Too bad I thought. I taped over the video! So we have nothing to show for that day in the bush.

One nice summer day we were out in the field with the kids. They were at the creek catching frogs. The boys all had their shirts off. And out of the bush came some deer. They were charging right at the kids. It made me think that as Native people we must also blend into Nature. I don?t know who was more scared that day, the kids, or the deer when they finally saw all the kids there.

I am grateful for my vision and for the gift of photography. I am grateful for creation. Guess the winter has gotten kind of long and I am missing the warm weather and being out in the bush for long hours.