I’m dipping into the archives tonight. This week slid by fast, and I don’t have a post ready. Too busy with a week off getting stuff done around the house and yard to work on anything artistic! I’ve been meaning to post these pictures anyway, so tonight’s as good a time as any.
Back in July of 2010, I went up to the Lake Itasca area for a long weekend. It was only my second visit, and of course I had to go to the headwaters of the Mississippi, which is what the park is known for. Here’s the last little bit of the lake before it turns into the start of the mighty Mississippi:
Although Itasca State Park is beautiful, it’s also full of biting flies and mosquitos the size of musk oxen when you go there in July. These suckers don’t seem to care how much DEET you bathed in, either. Although I tried a couple of hikes, the bugs drove me back to my car every time. Fine. If I was gonna be stuck in the safety of my car, I was going to find someplace nice to drive.
That someplace was Tamarac National Wildlife Refuge, which is just to the southwest of Lake Itasca. There was a nice dirt road running through it and nobody around…at least not on a weekday. So I settled in to enjoy my vacation bug-free. Not far into the refuge, the road passed over a river where I saw swallows darting and diving over the water, catching insects. I stopped and got out to attempt to photograph them.
No real luck at that. They were too small and moving too fast to catch in focus. While I was standing there, I heard some kind of bird screaming occasionally in front of me off to the left, but didn’t think much about it. When I became bored with trying to capture swallow photos, I turned around to go back to the car, camera still in hand.
As I turned, I looked up and saw an eagle coming right at me. If my camera hadn’t been in hand and at the ready, I would simply have a fun tale to tell. But given that I did have my camera on and in hand, I got pictures to illustrate the story:
He was flying pretty low. The lens I had back then only went to 200mm, and while this is cropped in, I didn’t have to crop in very much. See how he’s screaming? I was enjoying such an adrenaline rush of awe at seeing him up close that I never heard that scream. Didn’t realize he’d done that until I was home and looking at the pictures.
In a split second, he’d swooped over me and away across the river, flying off to the right. Folks often think this is a different eagle, because the sky is blue and not gray. Nope, it’s the same eagle, after the swoop–I pivoted while shooting as he flew over, and there were clouds in one direction, clear sky in the other:
Truly a breathtaking experience…the type of thing that I always see as a gift. Once I got into my car and drove past the river, I saw a juvenile eagle on the ground next to the road. When he saw me, he flew off. Suddenly, the full story snapped into place. The bird I’d heard screaming earlier and the one that swooped over me were likely the parents. With their offspring on the ground close-by, they probably weren’t entirely thrilled with my presence. I’m guessing the one that dive-bomed me was hoping to encourage me to move along.
I have to wonder what would have happened had I not turned around just as he dove toward me. Was his intent to hit me from behind, and he pulled up when I seemingly caught him in the act? I’ll never know, but I’m glad I turned when I did. Both for the pictures I got, and for the stitches I didn’t!
