POTM...*: The Gift

(*Photo of the Month)

OK, I have been asked about these two photos several times, but don’t think I’ve ever yet taken the opportunity to share them together; so I thought I’d post them this week as my photo(s) of the month.

I’ve heard it said that good photographs are not ‘taken,’ they are given, even granted as a gift. With what I believe about the gifts of nature from our good God, I truly do find that there are special photos we’ve shot that we more accurately see as being gifts from God. This pair is one such example.

Gail took them three years ago while we were vacationing in Michigan. The subject is a whitetail fawn, of course, at least in one photo; the fawn, it seems, may provide the backdrop for the subject in the other. It depends on how you look at it.

We have stumbled across resting fawns in the woods, in our Michigan yard, in a neighbor’s shed, even had one plop down right on the highway one time as it crossed and we approached; needless to say, we pulled over, went back and got it off the road. In each of these cases we never saw the doe. Adult whitetails will frequently leave their newborns in order to go and make their necessary browsing circuits; and since a fawn is relatively scent-free, and sits stock still as it rests, a predator can pass within feet of it and not take notice. (Hmmm… stillness and the ability to be hidden from the predator… Now that might actually preach some time…) The fawn’s spots even provide camouflage in the process, breaking up the patch of tawny brown quite well.

This one, however, no longer young, was on the move with its mother nearby, and Gail just happened to be in the right place at the right time to receive the gift. We have been grateful for the photos ever since.

It was naturalist John Muir who said:

…A single day in so divine an atmosphere of beauty (as God’s good earth) would be well worth living for. And at its close, should death come without any hope of another life, we could still say, “Thank you, God, for the glorious gift!” and pass on.

~~RGM, May 16, 2014

P.S. If you love deer as much as I do (it’s actually my favorite animal to see in the wild, in spite of its ubiquity), hit this link to return to a blogpost I did on deer some time ago.