Spring Morning

Our assignment that week was to pick a theme and shoot as many frames as we wished. Further, we were to develop the film and present the five best photos to our professor for grade and commentary.

The revered Leica in hand I wandered about Fort Collins. I snapped pictures of people. Boring. I spent days with birdbaths, statues, fruit and other subject matter of equal monotony framed in the viewfinder.

I headed east to the Pawnee National Grasslands. I had drawn an antelope tag for the fall season so I decided to look for lopers. I convinced myself, as an excuse for playing hooky, that perhaps I would find other suitable subject matter for the photography assignment. I was miserably behind deadline a few days hence.

I drove a soft top, manual, orange Bronco in those days. The air currents in the cab ranged from gusty to hurricane force. The top had been lost in a blizzard as I came over Raton Pass headed home from a New Mexico elk hunt. I journeyed eastward on Colorado Highway 14. The spring sun drenched the gentle roll and angulations of the plains. The warmth nibbled at the snow drifts that lay in the folds of the land. Cloud shadows played tag with one another across the landscape. The deserted road was just my kind of scene. I was in a particularly good humor.

To be continued…..