I often take the difficult road. Today wouldn’t be any different.

Hundreds of miles from home. Not only were there rocks, but icy rocks.

Snow pack. Chilly Creek. Bushy Brambles.

I am motivated to see that cascade in perfect view. When wasn’t I motivated?

My oft’ broken ankles would argue if they could talk. They speak in aches and weakness.

Thick winter garb chafes with every motion. Swish. Swish.

I vaulted over encased rocks and petrified winter wood. ‘Vault’ is a very generous word.

Careful movements, soft with the deliberation of a slightly speedier sloth.

Snow crunches. Ice splits.

I hold a lens between myself and the landscape. And the world for that matter.

Without the buffer of a camera, the world would envelop and overwhelm me.

A narrow filter. Experience without every experience.

I see what I want with my eyes. But not with my camera!

A log juts out into a strangely undefined brook. Edges obscured by the snow that befell the valley.

Clear. Turbulent. Living and also devoid of life.

I stop short of my goal. I pre-plan the next 5 steps.

Log. Up. Ice mound. Stick to hold. Root to support a wide stance.

Ballet without the artistry or flare.

I execute the twist, bob, weave, duck, and hold as I imagined. Proud of myself and my ankles!

Perched above my mini malstraum, my target is in view and my camera within reach.

24 millimeters? Perhaps 35.

Behold!

Before me a cliff rises over 100 feet that would be covered in brush and trees if not for the clumps of white, frozen stuff strewn about like blankets concealing their boundaries. Interrupting these beautiful lumps of flakey ice crystals, a torrent of mountain water cleaves through the precipice, unabated by the cold. It makes a suicidal leap into granite boulders before me with a constant veracity and anger toward its perpetual existence. I can admire this memorial to the now, the past, and the future.

It will always fall. Has fallen. Will fall.

I braved injury, my own fall to be perched on that skinny log right now.

An escape plan from this precarious spot is a distant thought as I raise my security blanket to my face.

Click. Click. Click.

I may not capture what I feel today in a little rectangular image. I’m limited to one thousand words.

Yet the picture will prove a moment was had in such a frozen place dearth of human groping. 

Click. Click. Click.

I lean a tiny bit right and down and find the new perspective.

A subtle shift one way or another can change everything. Perhaps a more truthful representation?

Click. Click. Click.

I notice something missing. A negative space seems to manifest to the right of the falls.

If only I could plant a magnificent fur and return in a century. Nature is not a mathematical aesthetic. Click. Click. Click.

I consider the void of space for another moment. A tree would be a subject of such permanece.

What of wildlife? Something on the scale of our short lifespan.

A deer? A moose? A moose!

I wait for my magic moose to part the brambles and sip from the mountain stream.

Not even a bird was perceptible on the hike in let alone any large wild mammals.

Wintery death abounds. Not an antler, nor a hoof. 

I take in the white noise of the gushing rapids for unspecific time. The sun stayed put, so not that long.

The day consisted of moments and not hours. A clock only served as context and not definition.

Why do I hear it tick above the din?

I left the forest and home without a broken ankle, frostbite, or a picture.

Nothing fills a negative space in a photo when perfection is sought in such an untamed domain. 

Just where was my moose?

I often take the difficult road. Today wouldn’t be any different.