Chasing the Winter Sun

THE STORY BEHIND MY LATEST RELEASE: “SILENT WATCHER.”

In the fall, as soon as there is snow in the higher elevations, I track. Starting in November, tracking animals becomes an obsession. The way I look at it, if I go out into the mountains and find a fresh track in the snow… there’s an animal at the end of it! More on that later.

Here at the gallery, the most persistent question I get from visitors is “how do you find all these animals?!” Wondering at all the prominent wildlife photos on my gallery walls, people sometimes arrive at the conclusion that maybe I bait animals with food or visit fenced wildlife sanctuaries somewhere. Well, I don’t! I just spend a LOT of time in the woods.

Outdoor enthusiasts flock to this area (northern New Hampshire) and though the mountain views are more than reward enough for the effort, it’s rare for the hiker to see a moose or bobcat or bear out on the trail, even in the furthest reaches of our national forests. In fact, I rarely see anything more exciting than a chickadee on my hikes!

Hiking vs. Tracking

The thing is, as much as I DO love a good hike, I leave my telephoto wildlife lenses at home. I go for the heights, for the mountain wind. But when the snow begins to fly in late fall, I pull out my wool layers and a different pair of boots – knee tall and waterproof, for squelching through wilderness marsh. And wooly pants, for the briars that tear at my legs where there are no trails. Truly wild animals are smart enough to stay away from hiking trails. I head for the blank spot on the map. I’m going wherever the tracks take me.

Remember those little booklets we used to practice with, in our youth? “Animal Tracks & Signs,” “The Art of Wildlife Tracking,” – little guides like that. Do you remember? I still see them at yard sales sometimes. Now as an adult who never really outgrew my childhood fascinations, I found myself caked in deep snow half-way down a cliff in a staring contest with a bobcat and think.. “wow – that escalated quickly!”

Back To The Story:

I was rambling around in fresh snow and it was just one of those spectacular days. Tracks everywhere. Otter, deer, snowshoe hare, even a moose. I found a hawk feather. I got that sunshiny winter air down in my lungs and even further into my spirit. The truth is, tracking is a tricky form of sadistic self-torment because it rarely works, but when I’ve had a bit of success lately, I start getting all dreamy about it again. What an art form! I won’t get into the details of “aging” a track to determine how fresh it is, or how to manage your stinky human odor and thwart the animal from scenting you, or all the tricks they throw at you by looping and back-tracking and j-hooking when they know they’re being followed, and how to play your best chess game when your cover gets blown and they smell, see or hear you stomping through the undergrowth like a drunken milk cow. But it’s demoralizing! It’s demoralizing when you start to realize just how different we are than animals – how naturally they slip through their world and how much skill it takes to become like them, out there. To get close to them.

I’d tracked all day, covering a lot of miles. I’d worked my way up into some ridges in deep snow and was trying to catch up to a buck. That’s another thing: catching up. A lot of times that’s a bigger part of the challenge than any of their actual tricks. Many of these animals simply travel faster than we do. This buck was picking his way through the snow, nibbling on tree-mushrooms and half-buried mountain ferns, but he kept going all day and I simply never caught up to him, never saw him. When his tracks disappeared over the tallest ridge and into the valleys on the other side, I knew it was time to point my compass back toward the truck and see if I could make it down off the mountain before dark. I descended into some cliffy terrain, and before long, I struck a fresh bobcat track. Gosh I wished I’d discovered that track before I spent the whole day tracking a buck! Nevertheless, I took up the track and began moving along slow.

The Encounter

I followed the track for a while in and out of a hemlock forest where I could tell the cat had been hunting squirrels. I found where it crept, where it pounced, where it ate. I saw everything. And eventually when the track entered an endless thicket of waist-high firs and pines, I knew he’d evaded me just like that buck. I wasn’t going to find a wildcat in thick trees like that. But a funny idea began to creep into my mind. If I couldn’t get to the bobcat, I’d try to call the cat out to me! So, up there on that mountain, all by myself with the sun sliding down behind the pines, I began screaming at the top of my lungs. Like a dying rabbit. The shrieking, blood-curdling screams of a rabbit in distress is, in fact, of great interest to a bobcat. Around here, snowshoe hare makes up quite a bit of their diet. I piped down after a while, because I really had no ability to accurately mimic the particular scream of a rabbit, but I made the effort. When I’d finally accepted defeat, I tugged the zipper on my waist-pack to extract a quick snack before the final descent through the cliffs. The sun on the trees was spell-binding. With my hand still on the zipper, I felt I was being watched. I thought I spied a bit of movement. I looked harder – and there, sitting on its haunches about 30 feet away, was a perfectly motionless, majestic, almost holographic bobcat. I forsook the granola bar and instead quickly eased the camera out of my pack, and in one smooth motion raised it to my eye and snapped the shutter. There was only a heartbeat; I got to look into its eyes and then it looked away as I took the photograph. I love that about this picture. She went back to watching, looking past me, gazing into the last rays of the winter sun. I was a little embarrassed about the screaming anyway.

Of course, the bobcat disappeared as quickly as it had appeared, and I stuck the camera back in my pack for the long trek out through the hastening dusk, wondering if I’d managed to capture the moment we both seemed to regard. A moment fleetingly shared in the sun and the snow. An hour or so later, I got off the mountain safely with a headlamp and a bit of moonlight.

Months later, with spring now upon us, I know that was my only successful tracking photograph of the entire winter. Many weeks of snow-trudging, animal-scaring, stomach-growling hard work, and one consummating instant of photography. If only my friend the bobcat could know how crazy I truly am! I think about every snowflake in that snow-draped wonderland when I look at the photograph, now hanging on the wall here. When I finish my book about my favorite adventures and photographs someday, this one will be in it, and among my favorites. Every detail of the story is true. Especially the screaming. I decided to title this photograph “Silent Watcher.” I love the impression she left on me. Quiet, dignified. I’d do well, as a human, to do a lot more observing and make a lot less noise with my mouth. 

Beautiful prints of “Silent Watcher” (like the framed piece below) are available at my online store here.