TBT, Sometimes a Rock Can Spread its Wings and Fly
Back in 1989 I bought a used up rocky old farm that seemed perfect for a young forester to adopt and turn into a forest.
It was a time of joy, not just becoming a new homeowner, but having a whole farm with 3 forties to create a forest on.
Most evenings in that first fall I would take a hike around the farm, examining every acre and dreaming about the forest that would someday cover all of the open fields and pastures.
One evening during this first fall I was hiking toward the back end of my new farm when out of the corner of my eye, I spotted something that seemed amiss.
Surprising that I would even notice an extra rock in one of the hundreds of rock piles scattered round this rocky old farm.
Something about this extra stone grabbed my attention and caused me to take a second look, and I am glad that it did.
So I took a little detour toward the pile of old stones, and stopped short when I realized why this stone caught my attention.
This was not just a special stone, but a wild gem that we do not see around every day, and I was now hoping that it would stay put until I could get a picture of it.
Since this was long before the days when we started carrying a phone with a camera around with us everywhere we went, a mad dash back to the house seemed to be in order.
So I sprinted back to the house, grabbed my cheap little 35mm camera that I had received from Time Magazine a few years before along with a subscription to their fine magazine.
Next came the stealthy hike back to the rock pile where I hoped that this unique stone would not give up its attempt at camouflage in among the other stones in my rock pile before I could get a good photo to mark the occasion.
It would have been best to have a good quality telephoto lens for this project but since I did not I had to make do and get as close as i could, taking several photos as I approached.
My the camera did not do justice to how close I actually got before the stone realized that it's cover had been blown.
Eventually the stone did realize that it could no longer blend in and turned into a snowy owl before taking flight and ending our photo session.
It has been a long time since I have thought about this owl, or even seen the rock pile since it has disappeared inside the forest that we planted on this site shortly after this encounter.
Maybe when the snow melts in the spring I will take a hike out there to admire the trees and reminisce with the rock pile about the extra stone that visited here back in 1989.
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