Life and Death
2/16/2018
The sun had risen; the night was gone. As per my usual morning routine I picked up the bird feeder by the back door and brought it out to its hanger. Contrary to what the deer think, my feeder is solely for the birds! I could hear the sounds of life (my regular crowd of Nuthatches, Tufted Titmouse, Chickadees and assorted woodpeckers) chirping away in the trees as if to say, “What took you so long?” and enjoyed the thought of my contribution to their day to day existence. We humans do have a rather high opinion of our ability to control life and death, don’t we? As if to put my pride in perspective, at that very moment, a grand flash of movement swept through my neighbor’s driveway. It was a Red Tailed Hawk with a rather gory package in his talons. The black squirrel was immediately and recognizably dead and its killer carried his catch to the top of my neighbor’s shed. I literally stopped dead in my tracks. The power of the scene both repulsed and amazed me. Frozen in awe I gazed at the magnificent bird and the helpless meal. How many seconds passed before the thought occurred to me that I should really get my camera I do not know, but at some point I realized capturing the captured could be a possibility. “No way!” my rationale chided, “He’ll fly off the second you move!” But, if opportunity was knocking… To my surprise the hawk was still majestically perched on the shed when I stepped back outside and although it was hard to look past the gruesome condition of his prize, the photographer in me took over and let the camera do its job. He stared at me; I took pictures of him. Three shots and he was gone.
Life and death are inevitable in this world. We rejoice in the former and do our best to avoid or put off the latter. When a child is born we celebrate; when death comes we mourn. While we wish we could control the number of our days here on earth, the truth is we can’t. But with camera in hand, how we see those points of beginning and end changes. They are but moments in all their glory, especially in the realm of nature. In that moment when the shutter first clicked and recorded the hawk and its trophy, the camera saw both the perpetuation of one life, and the demise of another; the two irrevocably connected forever in that one picture. Such a powerful tool in such inept hands! As I’ve replayed those moments in my mind I have come to the realization that I will never really control life or death in the physical realm. Just because I put a bird feeder out each day it does not mean that the birds could never exist without it. But while I cannot control nature, I can control my camera and in the artistic realm, I do, in an ideological way, have some sense of power over life and death, but only through the snap of a shutter. Recognizing this has given me a greater sense of respect for both life and death. And while capturing that cycle shared between the captor and his prey the other morning may not have been pleasant, it was a privilege to witness and record it.
Ann H. LeFevre
February 16, 2018