A View from the Driftwood

The morning began with fog.

We are staying in Port Townsend, Washington, on Admiralty Inlet, where water from the Strait of Juan de Fuca enters Puget Sound. Most mornings, we can watch a stream of fog moving in from the strait, but yesterday morning it completely swallowed Whidbey Island and the Cascade Mountains that rise behind it on a clear day.

The sun appeared above the fog bank and cast a streak of pink and orange across the silvery water. I took a photograph, but it doesn’t quite capture how unusual the scene looked.

Later in the morning, I hobbled down to the beach and found a piece of driftwood where I could sit and watch the water. The white sky seemed to merge with the white fog and silver water, creating an almost colorless backdrop. Whenever a bird flew past, it appeared briefly as a dark silhouette against all that white.

At low tide, a large gathering of birds had collected on the spit near where I was sitting. Birds periodically joined the group or lifted off from it, giving me plenty to photograph.

Then, suddenly, they all left.

I photographed the flock as it rose over the water, then turned to see what had caused the commotion.

A bald eagle was perched on a piece of driftwood not far from me. Bald eagles sure know how to break up a party.

A crow soon landed on the same log. I watched, curious about what it intended to do so close to the eagle. After a moment, the crow flew down to the rocky beach and began searching among the stones and seaweed, just as I’ve watched the crows do here every day.

It found something.

Apparently, the eagle noticed too.

The eagle launched from the log, chased the crow away, took whatever the crow had discovered, and then returned to its perch. So much for doing the hard work yourself.

What I didn’t know while all this was happening was that Regis was watching from behind me with his camera. He photographed me sitting on the driftwood with the bald eagle flying nearby. The perspective makes the eagle look much closer to me than it actually was.

I wasn’t just photographing the story. I was in it.