The Hidden Lagoon
March 4, 2006 – 5:02 pmI had a moment this morning. It was a scene straight out of a movie. The one where the lost adventurer stumbles out of the dense jungle, to find himself in a clearing where angels are singing and glorious rays of light are glimmering down through the treetops giving everything an unearthly glow. The grass grew greener there and all of the animals were happy.
Let me start at the beginning though. I grumbled out of bed at 6:45AM after trying to wake Michele up (which she had SPECIFICALLY asked me to do the night before), and failing miserably. I had planned on going out to practice using my new camera first thing today and that’s what I did. I went directly to the beach to get some horizon shots so I could see what kind of distortion my lenses produce at different focal lengths. I got quite a few of those and then wandered around for a bit, looking for anything interesting. I didn’t spot anything worth shooting so I headed further down the highway.
Most of that stretch of Highway 98 runs directly along the shoreline of the bay to the north, but there is a good bit of it just before the bridge to Destin that is lined by a small pine forest. There are some really cool looking, twisted old trees in there that I wanted to get some pictures of.
I parked on the shoulder of the highway and trudged in. I wasn’t prepared for what lay just beyond the treeline next to the highway there. It was actually a swamp. Luckily this wasn’t a year round swamp though and its the middle of the dry season. So right through the middle I went.
I clambered around, snapping a few shots here and there. I found some interesting hurricane debris as I meandered. Lawn decorations, pieces of docks and fences, boat trimmings and so on. Interestingly enough, there was not a single human footprint anywhere in the sand. No old campfires, no piles of spent fireworks, no empty beer bottles. None of the usual signs of any human presence you would expect to find in the woods. That was cool.
So anyway, the going started to get a bit tougher, but I persevered. Climbing over and under old vines, walking face first into spider webs that could stop a large bird mid-flight, swatting away hordes of mosquitoes… No actually it wasn’t that bad at all. But when I finally did look up, I was standing in front of a hidden lagoon, and all around me were nesting Great Blue Herons. Well, they were way up in the tops of the trees, but they were everywhere.
It was really neat. It was like discovering the Land That Time Forgot. It felt incredibly peaceful and pristine.
So, I snapped a few pictures of the Herons as best I could. My long range lense leaves much to be desired in the sharpness range. Not to mention that I’m still a noob with this D200. I lingered for a while just kind of soaking it in. When I felt that I had soaked in enough of it, I moved on towards the coast. I had to backtrack away from the lagoon and then sort of circle around it to get to the shoreline. The growth around the lagoon was too dense to try and get through without getting hurt or breaking some of my gear.
When I reached the shore I headed down to where the lagoon opened up to the bay. When I found it, I also found a nice little sign placed by the military, warning of the nesting birds and how they spook easily (which I DID notice actually), and also that scaring them might cause them to abandon their nests. I felt bad for a minute. Then I took a picture of the sign so I could better illustrate my story.
