Audience With A Peckerwood Queen
I followed a hunch.
Beyond our sleeping room window, dense fog and those delicious, disembodied sounds that accompany such mornings. Ferry boat foghorns. Trains at rail crossings. Sea Lions barking. Disoriented seagulls. A lavish, aural feast at the edge of the Salish Sea.
I turned back from my walk toward the car to gather a scarf. First time I’ve wanted one so far this season. It was cold; damp cold. Foggy cold. Invigorating cold. And I was headed for a long walk beside the water.
I expected sea ducks, which I found. And probably a ‘Baldie,’ which I also found, strafing (without luck), a large, mixed pod of swimming, Common Goldeneyes, Harlequin Ducks, Buffleheads and Red-breasted Mergansers about fifty feet offshore.
A quarter mile distant, at the edge of a wooded headland and the feet of a Wooden Troll, this majestic, feathered queen, immersed in her namesake activity, hammering away, angling her chiseled bill this way and that while excavating a section of downed log and probing each newly accessed crevice with her ant-loving, barbed tongue.
A crow flies into the tree above her and ‘caws.’ She turns, instinctively, quickly scans the maze of branches above her for movement and threats, then turns back to her task. Bothersome corvid.
I am kneeling nearby, wood chips and gravel, a little fog-dampened mud, taking in every in every action and interaction, thankful for fleece-lined pants, unfazed by muddy knees. A passerby might come upon this odd scene and wonder. “Why is that strange man kneeling there in the mud near that troll, talking softly and aiming his camera near the ground?”
Thankfully there are few out walking in this early damp and cold, and not a single one passes by while he kneels before this peckerwood queen, her loyal subject… her portraitist, her adoring, weirdo supplicant.
This is my ‘out loud’ conversation with myself as I was reading, ( no, no one else in the room with me listening in) .
“ He did not, oh my gosh he did, of course he did!”
I have seen photographs of those giant wooden beauties. And I have a Pileated friend in my yard, sculpting what’s left of an ancient Pine, an artist-in-residence . I just knew you were going to get the ‘shot’ and there it was!
Truthfully, I thought you would have spoken Pileated and sweet talked her into posing on a shoulder or hand.
I can only imagine what a photograph might look like if taken from behind you.
P.S. fleece lined jeans, a luxury, no winter should be without.
I adore this "Working class diva" in her portraits! I've been staring, looking right up close, admiring that scarlet crown, all those exquisite triangle feathers leading upward to it with hints of yellow; the bright red-orange-ringed eye, the dash of brighter yellow-orange on that amazing beak---and then the complex details of layered feathers--- wow, those fan feathers!---totes an artist's dream. (Ohhhh, the troll!)
You have such a generous way of sharing being present in the moment, my friend, and imagining you making these portraits on your knees without a care is just the bestest...