Well, that was pretty much a waste of time.
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Lying in the snow with my camera aimed at water dripping down from a roof, I was trying to get pictures of the drops just as they hit the ground. I had the lens aimed at the spot a bunch of previous drops had splattered and was trying to figure out when the next drops would fall so I could hit the shutter button at the right time.
The drops made a sound like “pap” when they hit. So after each little pap, I counted one-one thousand, two-one thousand, three-one thousand and so on until the next one splashed. Obviously, if I tried to shoot right as the drops hit, I was likely going to miss. But if I could anticipate their arrival, I could rely on the camera’s ability to shoot 40 pictures every second to up my odds.
If I’d been here — Clear Lake, east of Stavely — even the day before, I wouldn’t have been doing this. Though the weather had been just fine, the temperature had still been below zero and that would have meant the snow wouldn’t have been melting. No melting, no dripping.
But now, with the sun shining and the west wind picking up, the temperature had risen and was now hovering around 5 C. Water was beginning to run everywhere.
It hadn’t been quite that warm when I’d left the city, but it was easy to see that it was on its way. Rolling south, I could see the chinook clouds beginning to churn with high-altitude wind while down in the Highwood River valley, thin blue mist hung over the fields where the warming air met pockets of cold.
Heading southeast, I crossed the Arrowwood Creek valley, passed through Herronton — so glad that old grain elevator is still standing — and then up to the next ridge south of Mossleigh. The view from up there is spectacular, with nothing but farmland between there and the bright, snowy, sunlit mountains to the west.
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But it was hard to get a sharp picture. The warm air rolling in and mixing with the cold air was making the densities shift. So it was like trying to take a picture through water. Still gorgeous, though.
I had better luck with a little herd of mule deer. They were a bit closer, so there wasn’t as much air to shoot through and they stood still long enough that I could shoot a few extra pictures to increase the chances of at least one being in focus.
The redtail hawk down the road was even more accommodating. It let me drive up right next to it and then just sat there looking forlorn. Kinda don’t blame it. It was pretty unusual to see one as redtails usually head south for the winter. But this one, I guess, decided to stay and from the look on its face, it was regretting it.
Flocks of horned larks and redpolls were everywhere along the gravel roads, the redpoll flocks especially thick around canola fields that still had a few plants standing. Funny little birds, they descend en masse to whatever they want to feed on and then fly off only to circle back and descend again. Pretty little things, too.
From Ensign on south, the roads were starting to get sloppy. The wind hadn’t picked up yet, but the temperature had and the snow was beginning to melt. Slush was splattering around the tires as I drove along. And by the time I got to Clear Lake, the melt was well underway.
I hadn’t really expected to find much there. Thanks to the deep freeze and snowfall of the past couple of weeks, everything was frozen and covered in white. But one of the reasons I was heading southeast was to check if there were any ice ridges on big Keho Lake down by Lethbridge. So I figured I’d stop by Clear Lake for a look for no other reason than it was on the way.
No ice ridge, no birds, no sound but the dripping of water from the roofs of the buildings. Oh, and a rooster crowing. Never did figure out where that was coming from.
I was just about to turn around and keep going when I saw the sunlight glistening off the snowmelt falling from a small building by the boat launch. Aiming the camera at it, I tried to time my shutter to get the drops forming as they fell and when that worked, it seemed logical to try to get them as they hit the ground, too.
So I flopped on the wet snow to give it a shot. Or, as it turns out, about 300 shots. I laid there for 15 minutes, picking the spots where I thought the drops would hit, moving my focus point a few millimetres at a time as they landed closer or farther away, wiping the splashes off the front of the lens and finally counting the seconds between drops in the hope of timing my 40-frame bursts to catch at least one of them hitting.
All I got out of it was a wet belly and thighs. Yeah, I got a couple of hits but they looked supremely uninteresting. The video was better but only because you could hear the drips. Visually, stultifying.
The front of my clothes now soaked through — at least I didn’t have to sit on it — I kept rolling south and east. There seemed to be quite a bit more snow here which was a little surprising, but that helped me see the snowy owl out in a field a bit west of Barons.
This one was heavily mottled with dark brown feathers in addition to the typical white, so I assume it was an immature female. Her dark colour made her easy to spot against the white snow and judging from her position, she had just tried to pounce on something. She had either missed or gobbled it down before I saw her, but she had nothing in her claws when she took off.
Just down the road from her I found another flock of redpolls. These ones were bunched up in a row of caraganas, chirping and flitting from branch to branch in the thorny tangle. Among them were English sparrows and even a couple of chickadees. Their combined voices were nearly enough to overpower the hum of traffic coming from the highway that was close by.
There was indeed an ice ridge on Keho Lake. The problem was that it was way out in the middle, a long way from shore, and though it might have been fun to explore, with my wet clothes and innate laziness, I really didn’t feel like stumbling my way out there. So instead, I circumnavigated the lake.
The wind took a bit of the edge off the balmy 7 C temperature, but it was still pleasant as I stopped along the shore for pictures. There were small drifts among the grasses and willows and partridge everywhere. There were small flocks of them picking through the grave about every kilometre around the lake. A couple of very nervous pheasants, too.
The sky was filling with chinook cloud and the light took on a bluish tint when I looked back at the lake from nearby Albion Ridge. In the foreground, a quartet of horses milled around a wooden windbreak, while off in the distance Chief Mountain stood shrouded in cloud. An iconic chinook arch was starting to form, so I went higher up on the ridge to get a better look to the west as well as the south.
And there was another snowy owl, this one a bright, white male. He sat just long enough for me to get a couple of pictures and then flew off to the edge of the ridge to pose for me with a mountain background. Thank you, sir!
The sun was westering now, so I began to think about heading back. Funny, the days seem to be getting so much longer now even though the sun is setting at just after 5 p.m., barely a half-hour later than it did a month ago. It totals up to just over an hour of extra daylight but, to me, at least, it feels like an extra half-day.
Not sure what it feels like to the deer. There were bunches of them everywhere coming out to forage in the fields or, like one buck, try to steal grain from a bin. I didn’t quite catch him in the act, but he obviously felt guilty and hopped away, barely even acknowledging the stop sign at a rail crossing.
I cut north to Champion and then west again as the arch solidified and the sun sank toward its edge and the finally stopped just south of Brant, to watch the last of its orange rays splay out between the twin blankets of purple sky and blue snow. And as they did, something pretty cool happened.
As the sun dropped behind the mountains, its rays hit the front of the chinook arch, the part facing away from me. And when they did, the clouds reflected them back onto the showy mountains and lit them up almost as brightly as if the sun was shining directly on them.
Such a fascinating way to end the day.
A slightly frustrating day. True, I saw a redtail hawk, two snowy owls, a whole whack of mule deer, redpolls and some lovely landscapes.
But those drops of snowmelt coming off the roof?
They were pretty much a complete waste of time.
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