Metaphors

Metaphors for life are all around us if we look hard enough.  This image, captured during my paddle up the Inside Passage, is a study in patience. Not only is the bear deeply entrenched in waiting for the absolutely perfect salmon to swim by, but I am also executing a great deal of patience.  I watched this bear for quite a while as he would stand in the stream, paw on the rock, patiently waiting.  When the perfect salmon would come by he would dip his large snout into the water and retrieve a huge, and quite animated salmon.  ​Only a short stroll away was the shoreline where the bear would take the fish, consume everything but the bones, and then return back to the exact same spot in the creak and repeat the process all over.  I watched him do this for an hour, in which time he repeated the process more than 4 times.

Not only did I have to be patient in waiting for what I felt was the right moment, but from a technical perspective, I had already composed the image in my head, I knew what I wanted to capture.  It was bright outside and I wanted the water to be flowing, which meant I had to shoot at F10 in order to get a slow enough shutter speed to slow the water down.  I was hand holding the camera which required its own element of patience in order to get a sharp image. ​

So the lesson is that we need to slow down, look around us, see what is out there and pay attention to the metaphors of life.  Of course the safety of a blind when shooting grizzly bears in the wild from 20 feet away also helps!​