lagniappe

note: click to enlarge photos. there's eagley goodness in some.

we were back at that little bridge fishing place. the sweetie was interested in evening fishing as he's not so much a morning person. i did not try to explain that all those famous fishguys are morning people. we went around six, to the longer side of the trail. after an hour or so of uneventful fishing, i switched to the camera. it was about time to eat and as i've mentioned before, everyone fishes at the same time. the little birds were getting feisty.

a tiny green blur caught my eye and i noticed a hummingbird right next to me across the railing. this one was celery colored, so pale i hadn't noticed it in there with the weeds. my first thought was that there aren't any celery colored hummingbirds, at least around here and i figured i'd found something fancy. it was darting around fast in among the thistle and queen anne's lace. hmmm. pale purple flowers. white flowers. i've found some sort of mutant pastel hummingbird that feeds on pastel flowers. surely this is something special. i fumbled to get the camera ready. you may remember that i use the automatic setting which can take some serious managing on my part. there's a considerable amount of time between when my finger snaps the button and the camera chooses to open the shutter. the camera and i are developing an increasingly hostile relationship which appears to be entirely my fault for not learning how to use manual settings. and the little bird was gone up over the river. my eyes tried to follow it but there's not much you can do when a celery-pale bird smaller than most butterflies goes flying off against the sky.

but i looked up at the sky anyway and there it was, a black dot on the horizon. i already knew. and it was flying right toward me down the river. it wasn't one of those brown headed juvenile birds. it was a great big monster full grown bald eagle. now, i know. you're already sick of my eagle fascination, but i grew up in missouri in the seventies and early eighties. sure, i knew about noodling 30 years before anyone ever put it on tv, but i didn't know about eagles. in my mind, there were about five eagles in the united states and they all lived high on craggy edges of the oregon coast and nobody ever saw them because they only flew at the altitude of large jets. i'm sure you hold fast to some ridiculous ideas, too. as the bird got close enough for the white head to be visible, the folks fishing the other side of the river oohed and aahed and i kept snapping away. right along after it came one of those crazy necked herons. fantastic. this is really why i fish.

i wandered around a bit more, snapping stormclouds and mountains like you'd see in sympathy cards or those "footprints in the sand" type inspirational cards, when another heron sat itself down right across the little side creek from me, taunting me to get a good photo. i made so much noise tromping through the brush to get a good view the bird flapped up and down the creek a bit, but still in sight. so i walked up the trail toward the car and found a good spot. i took maybe twenty blurry photos of a white bird with black and gray decoration doing all sorts of acrobatic preening, but he never flapped up again.

restlessness and hunger overshadowed my interest in this lazy bird and i walked back to the edge of the bridge railing to see what the sweetie was up to. just one or two more casts with a new lure was all he wanted and he climbed down the bank and disappeared at the edge of the water. it was about 7:30 and just starting to feel like evening. the sun hit the edge of one of the mountains and the shadows got serious. i was leaning on the railing, just enjoying how nice it was to be out in such a place but at some point i looked back toward the car. my, the shadows were really quite deep back there in all those trees. that one on the left looked like night. and then that shadow over on the left moved. it walked from the brush to the left of the trail right out into the open, onto the grass. this might be a good time to remind you that paranoia is a part of my brain's little toolkit. chainsaw wielding lunatic was the first really good idea it came up with. and the shadow kept moving. it was black. it was furry. it had shiny eyes when it stopped and looked at me. bear. my brain amended its earlier serial killer idea and i looked again. it shambled over into the path a little further. it was about three quarters of the distance between us and the car (look at the path right down there). bear. definitely.

i know i've mistaken deer for bears in the past when they were stomping through the forest, but this was standing out on a grassy path the width of a road and it was looking right at me. it didn't seem worried. i said the sweetie's name several times. he was down at the water, about twelve or so feet below the landing i was on and he was right in the middle of catching a fish. i kept saying his name and kept watching the bear. the sweetie thought i was getting ready to take a picture of him with his catch when i leaned over the rail and said a string of words that included bear. the words didnt' sound as scared as i was. bear. are you sure? he asked. definitely. never been more sure of anything. the bear kept walking slowly right on over the path and onto the other side, down into the brush. and this is when my brain got really excited and started to celebrate. i'd seen a bear in the wild! i'd survived a bear attack! well, really, i'd survived a bear sighting. but that was fantastic. i was thrilled. nothing could be better.

and then the sweetie came up the side of the embankment. i was ready to go. he wanted to know where the bear had been and where it had gone which was when i realized we would be walking by the bear to get to the car. i had not yet survived a bear attack. not even a bear sighting. the walk back to the car was uneventful. the bear was busy somewhere else, probably fishing or telling his bear pals about his human sighting. "they're bigger than you expect, but they smell like chocolate." we got in the car and headed back on the old road that winds along the river. as we turned a curve we saw him. the chainsaw wielding lunatic was wandering down the road. he didn't have the chainsaw with him at the time, but even the sweetie recognized him.