Etude in black and white

In my part of the world, Spring is the time when color returns from its
wintering grounds somewhere in the damp, vaporous south. Viewed from a
geographic or temporal distance the process, which occurs by fits and
starts, blends into a seamless progression, but here on the ground it
lurches disconcertingly.

Standing on the bank of Castle Rock creek, I've got Joel perfectly framed
standing on the opposite bank with a barn and several Holstein cows in the
background. The cattle, whose piebald coats seem (oddly, for creatures
created by and entirely dependent on their human owners) so well adapted as
camouflage in fields of black loam with patchy snow cover, look as out of
place and time as the audacious forsythias shrieking their presence in a
still drab landscape. Joel, by contrast, looks natural dressed in muted
earth-tones.

Earlier, parked on a bridge over the Blue river, we see an extravagant dark
mass of dead branches high in tree, like some sort of negative image beacon
against a bright thin overcast sky. It can only be an eagle's nest. Sure
enough, the bird's white head stands out defiantly even at a distance of two
hundred yards and even against the pale clouds. Binoculars reveal two
smaller fuzzy gray heads.

Earlier still, we catch apparently healthy but drab trout from Black Earth
creek within the limits of the eponymously named village. Later, as color
returns to their habitat, they'll feed on the burgeoning crustaceans and
pack on tint along with mass, but for now they have no more reason than
initiative or opportunity; this is still, but not for much longer, twilight
time.

En route from one watershed to another, we startle a group of three somberly
(and fittingly, given their profession) dressed turkey vultures who, as they
always do, have returned just in time to take care of the messes left by the
chance meetings between small to medium mammals, still groggy from the slow
winter time, and automobiles that know no seasonal moderation. The crimson
splashes that mark the vultures buffets fade ever more quickly as the season
progresses and the color is needed elsewhere.

A month from now yellow humpies and orange stimulators will fool the trout
with a promise of fat and succulence.....the sheer hubris of a royal
coachman streamer will excite the retribution of rainbows holding in a
riffle. Yesterday, the stark white on black of a pass lake, recalling the
motif of the season just past, worked well enough.

Wolfgang