It's a Tragedy, But No One's Dead

Or, Walking Across the Lilly Pads Lightly

It’s been a mess of a week, I’ve gotta tell y’all.

To start, last Saturday night, I picked up my phone and my friend Michèle skipped the greeting, wailing, “It’s a tragedy!”

“What is?” I asked, at the same time as she backed off: “No one’s dead!”.

It turned out that her oldest sons’ band director had changed the dates of band camp.

It doesn’t sound like much, and it’s not huge in the scheme of things, but what it all boiled down to was that the trip to the Grand Tetons and Yellowstone that Michèle and I have been planning for months with her, her kids, and some of my family was suddenly coming apart at the seams.

As soon as we started negotiating a new plan — she would have to go a week earlier than planned, and much as I might like to, I couldn’t stay that long, so we’d have to divide the trip into two parts, with her family as the recognizance group — I got two more pieces of news: one, that my beloved cat is likely dying after all, and two, the most serious of all, that my mom needs a set of emergency eye surgeries next week. I’ll be leaving to be with her in Blacksburg in a just a bit.

I don’t know what all this means for the Grand Teton trip — it’s hard even to think that far in the future right now. But through the mess, I’ve been learning about bears. The wildlife photographer guides I contacted a few months ago — Jack and Gina Bayless of Team 399 — sent me some wonderful resources on bears, and I’m slowly making my way through them, getting absorbed in them, projecting into a bear-ful future, trying to imagine their world.

I’m particularly loving Grizzly Times, which makes me feel like I’m a cartoon grizzly bear, sitting on a rocking chair on a front porch, unfurling a newspaper written specifically for me. And some other time, we’re going to *have* to go into even just the *name* of Mostly Natural Grizzlies, which I absolutely adore.

They also sent me this wonderful video by the Grand Teton National Park Foundation and Grand Teton National Park with a terrific family tree for bears 399 and 610.

Where would wildlife photographers or nature writers be without guides, local wildlife experts to inform them about conditions on the ground? And yet, at least as far as wildlife photography goes, it seems they’re rarely acknowledged.

I used to love listening to my guides in Africa talk about the photographers they’d get coming through their camps. They had all hosted photographers from BBC, National Geographic — you name it. They’d never name names, but they’d talk in generalities, with a mixture of pride and frustration. The days with professional photographers were tough but rewarding, everyone on board to find the best sightings and — just as important, and almost impossible — to find the best sightings in the best light.

When the big photographers were in camp, no one wanted to talk much. If the light was good, they wanted to shoot. If the light wasn’t good they wanted to go back to camp and edit photos. Maybe at night they might grab a drink, sit around the fire and talk about their photos, about what they got.

They could all take hundreds of frames per minute, but each one was slightly different — the angle, the light. After the editing was done and a few drinks had been drunk, then the best nature photographers in the world might start talking trash, comparing their pictures, trying to figure out, of the thousands of pictures of the one sighting, which one was best.

I remember one guide describe bringing a hot shot photographer to a leopard doing something he had never seen a leopard doing before — I’ve forgotten exactly what it was, I think it was holding a cub just above her face to examine her. But the light was bad, and the photographer was totally uninterested. “What do you want, the leopard to start juggling?” said the guide, completely frustrated. But there was nothing to do. If there’s no light, there’s no photograph.

A picture taken by my guide in Costa Rica, back when I just had a point-and-shoot and had no idea what I was doing. He took pity on my inability to get the beetle in focus and just went ahead and took this for me – it’s by far the best picture from the trip.

Often guides have their own cameras. With me and my group, they’ll take them out, take some pictures. I’m not sure if they do that, with professionals in the vehicle. I can’t tell you how hard it would be not to take pictures. There you are, in this singular moment, witnessing this singular beauty.

It’s almost impossible, I find, not to want to capture it, even as it’s impossible to capture, as the several photographers with their thousands of almost-identifical-but-not-quite photographs so ably demonstrate. The  moment is in there somewhere and also, completely, horrifyingly resistant to capture.

I wonder what happens to the guides’ pictures. They’re there too, at these ephemeral moments. Are their photos in competitions? Are they published? Some of them must be good. I’d like to see more of them.

This picture of an elephant at sunrise was suggested by one of my guides at Serian, Steve Liaram. He took our group out very early and had us lie down in the grass, then stood watch over us while we made our captures. This photo was accepted in the “Exposed DC - Crystal City Fotowalk Exhibit 2018” – thousands of people walked by it on their way to and from the DC Metro every day.

I have no idea, right now, if I’ll make it to Grand Tetons and Yellowstone this summer. I step into each moment as if from lillypad to lillypad, each step disappearing behind me, a moment inaccurately captured then gone forever. A photograph exposed and then, as if it were an a film photo in a darkroom, overexposed and gone.

I don’t know what’s before me. Still, I walk towards the bears’ solid embrace, I walk towards the voice of a guide.