What Changed the Question

In March I was at the finest National Park of all, in my opinion, Glacier National Park in Montana. I came away with plenty of successful photographs, none of which would be selected for my Limited Edition collection but that’s a story for another post.

In the last couple of days I spoke a lot with people who were lucky enough to live in the area. Like all Montanans that I have met, they were universally friendly and wanted me to enjoy their beautiful state to the maximum. One of the most common themes was Freezeout Lake and the fact that we were in the peak of its famous Arctic bird migration.

The first evening I started reading, and the next evening I read some more. Everything I read described enormous flocks of of Snow Geese, Tundra Swans and countless other Arctic birds using the lake as a resting point on their journey North. The good news was that it wasn’t too big a detour from my route home to Ohio either, so I let everyone know that I would be a day late home, charged all of my camera batteries and and changed my plans.

On the big day I arrived at the North Western corner of the Wildlife Management area. I was anticipating a spectacle. And got it. Sort of. Just not the spectacle that I was expecting.

Instead of enormous flocks of Arctic waterfowl there was a handful in the distance. This was because the lake was in the distance, or what was left of it was anyway. I had stumbled upon a scene of ecological stress and severe drought. Instead of a thriving lake teaming with resting birds, I was staring at bare lake bed mud, scattered with dead carp.

What Remains

As I stared at the scene in disappointment, I wondered if the detour had been a mistake.

Then, as I looked more closely, took the time to see instead of just looking, I realized that I was looking at the wrong subject. Only later did I realize what had happened. The landscape had changed the question. I had arrived looking for birds. It was asking me to look at something else entirely.

The most important stories aren’t always the ones that we set out to find. The story behind this photograph is as much about what is missing as what remains.