Pepper’s Big Adventure
We’re on the way home, set to log almost 5,000 miles on our journey. There’s much to report – including the many issues of traveling with a high-energy dog who has a few separation issues.
But Pepper has, all in all, done pretty well – despite barking every time someone walked past our motel room last night. She curls up and sleeps peacefully, in some very odd poses, in her corner of the back seat – although she has chewed clean through two leashes when we weren’t looking.
Please check out these pictures that chronicle some of her trip across the land.
Did you say no pictures?
Some mornings paddling the river I’m convinced there will be no pictures. I get up with the dawn, make several trips back to the house when I forget my cell phone, then my water, then my sunscreen. As the sun peeks over the trees, I finally launch the kayak, arranging two dry bags full of gear and a monopod between my legs. Then I paddle out to broil in the humid heat.
Two recent mornings were like this. The tide was high and rising. A few storks hung out in tall pines across the river. I spooked a few herons whose feathers camouflaged them amid the foliage. The marsh was showing its first hints of the fall gold, with a few stalks even blooming. A few seaside sparrows were flitting about, back from wherever they wandered, no doubt looking forward to the blooms (just yellow stalks of pollen above the seed core) ripening to seed.
On mornings like this, I start looking at the marsh details, even photographing the blooming grass. One obsession the past few years has been feathers. Egrets, herons and most birds molt heavily after mating and brooding. This time of year, their feathers will litter the marsh, hanging on stalks of grass, fluttering in the wind and floating in eddies. Young birds molt as they grow, often changing colors along the way.
Egret feather flutters in marsh
On one of these paddles, I spotted a feather snagged just above the water on some marsh grass. The only clear angle was backlit, so I maneuvered around it, gently, precisely. I braced and made images. I mounted the camera on my monopod to increase my chances of making sharp pictures.
When I finally decided I’d covered the scene, I spotted an egret’s mating feather fluttering from the tip of some marsh grass. I unpacked, braced, made pictures from the sunny side, maneuvered around it and photographed it backlit. It was a much stronger image.
Meantime, a couple egrets, a tricolored heron and a snowy egret had gathered on the overhanging limbs of a gnarly pine some 200 yards away. I made loose pictures of the scene, crept a bit closer and made more.
I decided it was time for some shade and breakfast, so I gently paddled over near the shore, my lens still out. And as I finished my drinks of water, granola bar and banana, something out in the marsh startled the birds and they flew from the pine.
Then I spotted a snowy egret and a tricolored heron 100 yards ahead in the shallows. I paddled out into the marsh just a tad to mask my movements as I edged closer. The tricolored flew anyway. But the snowy remained. As I slipped through the grass back toward the strip of open water along the shore, I saw there were two snowy egrets and two juvenile – still all white – little blue herons fishing the same area.
The next 30 minutes were amazing. The egrets crept closer and moved back, making various combinations of white birds, often just catching the sun, against the dark, shadowed shore. One of the little blues, however, just kept coming my way, fishing – and catching shrimp and minnows – as he moved along the shore. I sat as still as I could, my huge lens mounted on the monopod, firing off frame after frame.
He was about 20 feet away when my camera card filled. My shuffling through bags to replace it spooked him a bit, and he wandered off a bit further. I made a couple more images, and decided I should head home.
Paddling home a couple days later, I ducked and into the marsh across the river from our house. As I did, a shadow passed over me, I looked up and there was Blackie, our father eagle, flapping along with me. I hadn’t seen him in a couple months, maybe longer. He was back from summer vacation, surveying his territory.
He perched near the top of the tallest pine on that strip of shore, I swung wide from the creek, into the marsh, almost covered by the new-moon tide. While I explored different angles – all tough, with him so high in the tree – he posed patiently, showing me he was comfortable with my presence by grooming his feathers.
I left him on his perch as I paddled off, with another 8 gigabytes of images (about 400 pictures) from my “slow” morning. As I approached our dock, there was Blackie flapping by overhead, a Mississippi kite trying to chase him off. He might leave, but he wouldn’t go far.
I, on the other hand, have many miles ahead, as we set off on a Western adventure. I’ll have tales to tell.
Mostly Hot and Humid
We hit 100 degrees a few days back. And while that’s hot anywhere, this isn’t an Arizona or Oklahoma 100. This is the Lowcountry. Old folks say they can’t remember the May River and its shores staying this hot for this long – although I recall a few scorchers in my 30 years here.
We wake each morning with fogged windows. The past two mornings, I checked our digital thermometer at about 8. It has a wire going out the window to a sensor. And that’s a good thing, because I wouldn’t be able to read a thermometer through the fogged glass. The outdoor temp each day was about 79.5 degrees. Indoors (where I turn down our A/C to 77 at night), it was less than 2 degrees cooler. That’s humid – like a cave behind a waterfall. Camera lenses can fog if you pull them from the case within 20 minutes of going outside.
A few mornings back, my vented shirt was soaked before I even reached the river. I wasn’t splashing. And it wasn’t raining. When I finally crawled from the kayak three hours later, there was a puddle in my seat, and I hadn’t had an accident. My liter bottle of water, however, was dry. And I was thirsty.
The wildlife on the river make do somehow. The wading birds are slowly growing more numerous as they return from their rookeries. The clapper rails, deep inside the marsh, are active and loud, occasionally showing themselves to the quiet and careful visitor, but more often just echoing each other’s laugh-like call to announce my presence. The tiny wrens and sparrows seem to be elsewhere as the marsh prepares to bloom and seed. Young hawks and our summer-visiting Mississippi kite call out high overhead. The wood storks gather by late morning to soar in a circle toward the sun. Raccoons and otters, fighting fleas and other summer parasites, are teaching their young to fish. I hear them sometimes, but I seldom see them.
Still, these are fat times on the river. Crabbing has been excellent. The white shrimp, despite four inches of rain over the past 10 days, are growing toward harvest time. Fish are jumping. You can see stingrays prowling the shallows at low tide.
My recent paddling trips – and I’ve missed a few, due to the heat and a sore arm – have been fairly uneventful. I see all the sealife in the marsh creeks, a few birds roosting at high tide, maybe a passing pair of dolphins. But the real rush of activity is weeks ahead. Birds are molting after breeding. Their young are just starting to fish. Like them, I’m gathering my strength – both for a busy travel schedule ahead and for the rush of fall, as the fish – like the kids – return to school, and as the birds start flocking, some of them to meet their own travel schedules.
Still, I make a few pictures, capture some video. Each year as I learn more about the nuances of our seasonal rhythms, I know that despite the brutal conditions and inconsistent wildlife behavior, there are good images that come my way during the slower summer months, as you can see on this page and in my galleries.
“Keeping the May River Wild” Honored Again
The schedule for the 2010 Gray’s Reef Ocean Film Festival will include “Keeping the May River Wild” screening on Sunday, Sept. 19, at 11:30 a.m. in SCAD’s Trustees Theater in Savannah, Ga. Admission is free, and I hope you can join us.
I’m as excited about this honor as any my multimedia project has received. The tale of creatures who share our river is very dear to me. Telling it helped me earn my long-sought master’s degree from Ohio University. And it’s warming to know those who understand both the issues and the craft want to share this story
Here’s a news release about the screening. You can learn more, view a short trailer and order a DVD of the 24-minute multimedia project here – or by clicking several other links on this site.
It’s been two weeks since I last paddled the marsh. This news may just be enough to get me out there again, where I continue to make pictures and capture video. A key distraction was the NPPA Convergence in Charleston last weekend, where I attended our summer board meeting, garnered endorsement for a new initiative, presented a business seminar, shared in a panel discussion, met with a long list of great photojournalists and editors, and served up a Lowcountry boil.
With the resulting bad cold fading, I hope to paddle in the next few days. I’ll share what I find.
Don’t Hide Your Love – Share It!
A few years back, I spotted a comment on a photojournalism email list that suggested we refrain from letting clients know how much we love our work. The reasoning – demonstrated by increasing demands and decreasing compensation – was that when clients know we love, and live, to make pictures they can take advantage of our amorous needs to record history’s first draft.
I disagreed, arguing on The Digital Journalist that we should use this love as a selling point. Do you want a surgeon who hates his work? What about your HVAC technician? Do you trust his work on your heat pump if you know he hates crawling under your house? I know I don’t – and I’ll shortly be donning disposable clothing to venture into the awful crawl space beneath my mother’s house to check on recent duct work.
When we love we do, our work has higher value. And there’s every reason to market and sell this benefit.
PF Bentley, whom I’m proud to call a friend and mentor, has just posted an awesome and short documentary about making poi in Hawaii. Its overriding theme is that taro farming, harvesting and processing is rooted – literally – in love. Without such love, there is no poi.
KALO OLA – Taro is Life from PF BENTLEY on Vimeo.
Many a cook claims the same key ingredient. And so should we all, in all we do. If you don’t love what you’re doing, please find something else to do. You owe it to yourself, to your family who must endure your bitterness, to your customers and clients, and to whatever spiritual powers you acknowledge.
Thanks, PF, for your incredibly skilled and beautiful reminder. I’m deeply inspired.
Eagle Update – revised
Just a quick update. The eagles don’t seem to have left on May’s full moon. I heard them calling last Tuesday, a week into June and after last quarter of that lunar phase. And I spotted, from a good distance, since the tide was low, an eagle shape in the nest.
This morning, the first following the new moon, I could have sworn they had gone. I spent several hours along the shore in the marsh near their nest, where young red-tailed hawks were loud and busy. But I neither saw nor heard an eagle in the area. I figured the arrival of hot, sticky weather sent them packing.
Then, this evening, we went for a ride in our little motor boat, right after sunset. Motor off, we were drifting with the rising tide up a marsh creek, toward the eagle’s nest, and my wife spotted a large bird flying toward the opposite (from the nest) shore. Just as pretty a you please, we then heard magnificent eagle calls coming from that north shore.
One thought is these are not our eagles, but others working their way north from Florida. Maybe. As we headed home, we spotted against the darkening sky what looked like an eagle, flying in the general direction of the nest.
Eagles Earned Vacation
During a paddle late last week, I spotted, way up high, a couple eagles soaring together. Earlier in the week, I heard an eagle call across the marsh and spotted an adult bird over our dock. But I have a feeling that’s about all I’ll see or hear from them for the next couple months. Our eagle pair had a very busy winter, conceiving, hatching, rearing and fledging two young eagles. Click here to see a gallery of pictures from the 2009-10 nesting season.
Eaglets and Sheena at their May River nest
Each year, long about May’s full moon, our eagle couple take their vacation. Sometimes, “Blackie,” our current dad, will return before July ends. “Momma” tended to stay away longer. Now that she’s apparently soaring beyond our earthly view, I expect Blackie’s new mate (dubbed “Sheena” by my friends who bestow the monikers) to do the same. Here’s a picture of Momma and the moon made the evening before she left town in 2001.
Bald eagles don’t get their distinctive white heads and tails until their fourth year, when they reach sexual maturity. And they mate for life. We’ve followed our nest on the upper May River for about 11 years. “Dad” seemed to allow Blackie, who showed up seven or eight years back as a young eagle with black streaks still in his white head and tail feathers, to hang around the nest territory. Perhaps Dad knew his time was near, because he disappeared a few months later – dooming that year’s eaglets who needed both parents to feed them. Momma then took up with Blackie. They had some successful seasons and some failures, including the year the nest tree – struck by lightning 18 months earlier – toppled during a March storm. They rebuilt nearby, fledged a few more eaglets, and a couple years ago, Momma failed to return after an unsuccessful nesting year. Sheena, we think, was half of another pair down river. Blackie won her over to his half-ton nest, where they spent the 2008-9 season mating, apparently nesting, then mating some more – with no offspring. (more…)
Herons Huddle Atop Hummocks
Last week, bucking a swift morning tide, I took what may be my last paddle of the season to our great blue heron rookery, where I’ve been making pictures all spring. The young birds there – who look like their parents with butch haircuts – were just learning to fly. Within a few weeks wind and rain will blow away their abandoned, spindly nests.
It takes a good 40 minutes of steady stroking – against the rising tide – to cross creek and marsh to the tidal flats of an area we call “The Lost World.” On a hummock, or tiny island, in the middle of the shallow (about a foot deep on an average high tide) marsh, this year,
we’ve had about a dozen nests amid the thick, tall pines. Nearby, the skeletons of other pines, likely weakened by saltwater – either from rising sea levels or increasing boat wakes – attest to the hummock’s fragile future. Youngsters in another nest or two add squawks from pine tops across the shallow cove, rooted in another hummock.
Pepper Joins the Team
If I roll my desk chair back right now, I’ll run over the paw of a sweet young dog who seems to understand her new home is about the best a pointer can have. And that makes me very happy.
Pepper poses on our dock.
After we lost Sesame the Special, it was hard to consider another dog. But after a week of feeling sorry for Sesame and ourselves – and watching the squirrels brazenly assault our bird feeders, our garden, even our window screens – I decided to test the waters by surfing to the website of the Hilton Head Humane Association. Two dogs, siblings Duke and Duchess, caught my eye. They are just over a year old, allegedly a greyhound-German short hair pointer mix. I wanted a female, asked a shelter volunteer about Duchess and she sounded perfect.
Our daughter, Cooper, joined me on Monday for a trip to Hilton Head. And the moment we saw the dog, we both knew she had been sent to us by Sesame.
Sesame Remembered
I’m freshly returned from considerable travel: to Washington, where I met with old friends; to Baltimore, where I presented “Keeping the May River Wild” on Earth Day; to New York, where I attended an excellent ASMP copyright symposium, and to Athens, Ohio, where I took in the annual VisCom program celebration and taught a class on Business Practices.
While in Ohio last Sunday, I received a call from my wife, Janet. Our young and amazing dog, Sesame, had a stomach ache. Her belly was distended, she had thrown up a couple times and she was clearly in pain. I could hear the dog moaning in the background. She’d had similar, though less-severe, symptoms several months back, when the vet suggested giving her an antacid and watching. It then passed. But it didn’t this time.
Within a few hours, Janet was calling again. The dog was going into surgery after a harrowing afternoon when she went into shock. The vet had suggested we might not want to invest the thousands of dollars required. Her chances weren’t great. Little good news followed. Things were worse at every turn. The surgeon removed a large section of her “twisted” stomach. But in recovery, her strong heart raced, then dropped away. The toxins were loose. And so, soon, was her soul.
Big Weekend for “Keeping the May River Wild”
It’s been an exciting few months for “Keeping the May River Wild,” the multimedia documentary that grew from my master’s degree project and years spent paddling and photographing our unique estuary system. The excitement will build this weekend when the documentary will compete at the Macon (Ga.) Film Festival and be honored with the Southern Lens Award at the Beaufort Film Festival.
The video will screen in Macon’s Douglas Theatre at 5 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 18, and in the Macon Marriott Center at 9 a.m, on Sunday, Feb. 21. I will share some thoughts and be available for questions following the Thursday showing. In Beaufort, I will also be available following a 9:15 a.m. screening on Saturday, Feb. 20, at Seaside Vineyard Fellowship (formerly Lady’s Island Cinema), and my photographs will be available for purchase in the lobby. I’ll receive the Southern Lens Award from SC-ETV at the Beaufort Film Festival awards ceremony on Saturday night. Best-selling author Pat Conroy, actress Blythe Danner and actor Michael O’Keefe are also set to receive awards from the festival organizers.
Meantime, “Keeping the May River Wild” has been playing to rave reviews at community gatherings in Bluffton, on Hilton Head Island and in Beaufort. Many folks leaving presentations have pledged to change their lawn-care and storm-water-management habits. More local showings are scheduled, I’m set to present an Earth Day workshop in Baltimore and the documentary has been entered in another dozen festivals across the country. It aired for several months on The Beaufort County Channel, and it will air in the coming year on SC-ETV’s Southern Lens. In September, the project was named among the Best of ASMP 2009.
Photography and More by Greg Smith
Welcome to the new website for Greg Smith and mediaSmith. This site features links to galleries of photographs by Greg, information about him and mediaSmith, and probably more than you want to know about his 2009, 24-minute multimedia documentary, “Keeping the May River Wild,” which is now scheduled to screen at both the Macon and Beaufort Film Festivals in February. It will receive the Southern Lens Award at the latter.
Please contact us with questions or answers.
