On a day that just plain doesn’t have much excitement in it, sometimes it’s helpful to create a little.
Today, because of my vast experience photographing wildflowers and my uncanny ability to find a new blossom, even if it’s growing inside a cave on the far side of a mountain, I was able to discover this one, which is probably the only Bluebell to bloom so far this year in all two million acres of the Lolo National Forest. The other reason is that I tripped over it while trying to get a closer look at a Red-tailed hawk who was circling just up the hill.
To some, taking a picture of a wildflower is a fairly simple task and one which generates only a small amount of excitement, but to others (me), it can be much more.
The camera angle that seemed the most promising for the photo could only be achieved from a prone position on the hillside in a fashion that could alternately be used for photographing the underside of a snake, and only after I had achieved that particular position did I notice that most of the snow that had suddenly started to fall was finding its way down the neck of my jacket, and almost simultaneously I also noticed that the little rock I had just tripped over had been the home of a very large extended family of tiny black (biting) ants who quickly found their way through the hole in the knee of my old jeans and were hastily moving all of their belongings into what they considered to be their new home.
If there had been an audience (thankfully there wasn’t) shortly after these developments they might have been at least remotely curious about why there was a guy in his shorts in the middle of a snowstorm dancing wildly across the side of a mountain while clutching a camera tightly in one hand and frantically waving a pair of jeans in the other. See, it’s possible to create at least a small amount of excitement while performing a normally rather mundane procedure.
I think the photo however, turned out fairly well. At least under the circumstances.
Montana Outdoors 