Nightbirds
After a full day of hiking in the grand canyon a few weeks back, I still had the energy to hike 3 more miles to Lookout Plateau and back to get some sunset pictures.
I have always liked taking pictures of sunsets… there is so much involved. You have to rearrange your schedule in order to fit into the sun’s. There are the sun going down pictures, the sun on the edge pictures, and finally photos after the sun is below the horizon.
Each of these provide a different type of photograph, different colors, and an altogether different mood.
The best is when you have some hazy clouds dangling in the sky and after the sun has gone below the horizon, it bounces its rays off the clouds to you. The most brilliant colors you can imagine. Colors you usually only see in dreams.
I call them cotton candy pinks and blues.
After the sun had set in the canyon we started to walk back and I could hear birds singing in the knee-high brush along our trail. It was sweet and melodic, no sharp and short notes like I am used to hearing.
I was imagining why these birds only come out at night, since I hadn’t seen any during our entire day hiking. My only guess is that this is the only time they can hide from the keen eyesight of hawks, eagles, and condors that hunt in the canyon.
The canyon immediately dropped 10 degrees as soon as the sun went down.
Just when there was barely enough light to see the hiking path in front of us, you could look back and see the silhouette of a family of deer quietly making there way through the brush, stopping to nibble on it from time to time.
It seems every time I saw deer they were traveling in groups of four.
This is a different country, but my country.
Do you know what I mean?
