Snowbirds, Sparks & Spooks

*This is a narrative post; feel free to breeze past the words if you don't want to read through my long-winded, probably overly (and yet randomly) detailed story. The pics have all been edited in Nikon's View NX but not photoshop'd. Sooooo that means: no cropping, no healing of my stupid sensor dust, potentially crooked horizons & no fancy filters*

Saturday the 28th was one of those days; a day that will stand out in my memory. On par with life-changing, but not quite there.

My dear friend Del and I had planned a photoshoot. Spring is officially here, so we had something outdoors in mind. Nice, huh? However, lol, being Washington, I woke up Saturday morning to a steady drizzle. After a bit of the indecision mambo I remembered that dma hadn't visited Fort Casey. Seemed like a good destination; if it is rainy we could head indoors. He has an internal spidery spook sensor, so I figured this place might be of interest to him.

We headed out around the usual late-morning, noonish timeframe, fueled by caffeine and the best spicy chicken teriyaki on the east side. On the way up to Ft. Casey we made a couple of detours.

First stop: a field of snow geese. These buggers have been on his internal to-do list for awhile, and I am always, ALWAYS up for an adventurous detour (hmmm, maybe that is from all of my pro-level procastination? hehehe yup.) The first pic below is of the field prior to flight, and the one below was taken after a helpful farmer rode his bike into the field the crowd dispersed.


Second Stop: We were driving west on highway 20 when we saw a huge plume of smoke in the air. At first we thought it was intentional, side of the road type burning, but as we approached the intersection the smoke was billowing. Even from across a two-lane road the heat was intense. Of course, we headed over for a closer look. It ended up being a training site for the Anacortes Fire Department. Since it was just for training, I didn't feel bad gawking at the flames and snapping quite a few pictures. What an opportunity! The pics below are from the scene.

Finally, late-afternoon we reached our destination... Ft. Casey is a pretty gloomy place on a sunny day, but we arrived on a dark, crummy, cloudy day. We grabbed our gear and headed toward the site. The events that occurred while we were there, and our discoveries when viewing photos the next day can best be described as spooky (and THAT is a huge understatement). I was thankful for God's grace, for the gift of prayer, and the comfort of a good friend. That being said; I still have to figure out a way to fall asleep without all the lights on, so I have deleted the pictures from Ft. Casey from my sd card/computer & email, with the exception of the two pics below.

My closing thoughts for the day centered around the beauty of balance. Our lives are touched by wonderful, natural elements like the snow geese that greeted us when we crossed the Skagit County border. yeah, yeah, yeah, I know they are destructive to the fields. But the huge flock in flight was such a glorious sight. I know it sounds funny, but I am thankful that we had that bit of awe in the day. After witnessing the destruction of the fire and the unsetteling images at the fort, the experience of watching a flock of snow geese in flight helped keep my mind focused on life and the simple gifts that we are given each day.

Peace be with you,

Lori