Photographer's Log Photographer's Log

EVENING’S REST
It’s funny that I don’t believe I’ve ever before truly captured the fragility in geese. In the thousands of photos I’ve taken I can see their beauty and strength, loyalty and perseverance, intelligence and cooperative spirits, but I believe I have never actually identified their fragility so strongly as with this photograph. The field is immense, they are so tiny. The golden light of the setting sun outlines them against the sky: diminutive warriors, circling our world in punishing flights of endurance, finding rest and food in our fields, marshes, rivers and ponds. Tired from a journey whose adventures and perils we humans could not even begin to imagine, urged on to a destination we will never know, by forces we can never experience or understand, they sit in the golden red glow of the setting sun, waiting for whatever the unknown prompt is that comes and lifts them into the air as one to continue their journey. How little they seem to this large landscape, to the golden-red glow, to the shadows creeping up on them. Each a few pounds of defenseless feathers, flesh and bones, prey to all on the land and in the air. Each a remarkable being unto itself with it’s own story, it’s own chosen life-mate, it’s shared life perseverance.

For them, this was just another evening, and gratefully a gentle one, with kind weather upon them and plenty of corn kernels and insects to glean from the soil. For me it was an awakening, a new awareness of beings I’ve been photographing for years. When I drove away from White Creek Road, leaving behind the tiny flock of geese on the hill, I was blessed to bring their peace with me.
-June Mohan
Photo: (Copyright Mohan 2006) To contact the artist, please send email to: junemohan@hotmail.com