We’ve been running this game camera feature on our website since 2015, so as you can imagine we’ve collected thousands of pictures. The catch is that 99 percent of them are unusable. In most cases they simply don’t show anything interesting. But there are always some that fall into a gray area. There’s something nice about them, but they have no hook, as we say in the business.
Consider this series from late August 2016. A blue heron – nice, but lacks context. A young raccoon – pretty cute, for sure, but a raccoon in a stream does not present an obvious teachable moment. A human fisherman striding through the frame three hours after the raccoon was fishing on the same gravel bar – cool, but to be really compelling the two would have needed to be there fishing together.
What changed and prompted us to publish the series a year and a half later? Look outside your window. Three March Nor’easters in two weeks; possibly four in three weeks. Some mountain towns around here have gotten five feet of snow. They’re calling for lows around zero this weekend. You’re probably running out of firewood. A summer trout stream seems downright impossible right about now. Covetous. Just lush and fabulous.
So look at the pictures again more closely. Look at the light in the heron picture – that warm, early afternoon sun. Think of the soundscape: hear the stream’s song; the dog-day cicadas buzzing.
Look at how bright it is at 6 p.m. when the little raccoon enters the frame. Look at the forget-me-nots on the sedge-strewn sandbar, the blooming joe-pye weed, the goldenrods in the background. Is the white flower yarrow? Look at the thicket full of viburnums and alders and willows; even the honeysuckle in the foreground looks good.
Now see the fisherman striding through with purpose. There’s a little honey hole around the corner where wild brook trout and some stocked browns and rainbows hold under the bank. Work is done for the day and he’s there to take two of the trout home for dinner – he’ll put them in that little blue cooler he’s carrying. In the pack is a mushroom basket and knife; he’s on the lookout for hedgehogs, and sulphur shelves, and honey mushrooms, and late season chantys.
Imagine those trout curling on a hot grill later that evening. The mushrooms caramelizing with butter and a sprig of rosemary and tiny new potatoes in a cast iron pan, the potato skins dusted with flaky sea salt. There’s an heirloom tomato sliced thin and drizzled with a balsamic glaze. A six-pack of beer so cold the bottles are still sweating. Your sweetie’s there with you and she’s wearing a pretty dress, barefoot on the deck, or the porch, or the lawn – wherever it is you’re having this meal. The kids are away somewhere and it’s just the two of you. A doe and her fawns have snuck into the backyard to scavenge the year’s first dropped apples. The light is falling as the sun slides behind the mountain.
You turn to her and say: “I am so sick of this heat and so ready for winter. I cannot wait for it to snow.”
