We were on vacation. Shenandoah National Park, a favorite destination of ours. We would often go to meet my sister and late brother-in-law, as it is mid-point between their home in the South and our Northern home. This year was different, we brought my mom and dad.
Our timing for this trip usually (by design) coincides with the season of birthing for the numerous white-tailed deer. We hike, we walk the meadow, we drive and we watch the deer.
This being mid June, we were there for Father's Day weekend. Father's Day with my father is the day I remember best.
I wanted an early-morning trip to the meadow. I love early-misty-mountain mornings when the mist hangs like a chiffon veil over the meadow and that damp mossy-woodsy smell fills your head. These mornings incorporate my favorite smells, favorite sights and favorite emotions. Now put that all into my favorite place to be (Big Meadows), and you know why I needed to be there. But "early morning" to me means leaving the cabin in the dark so that you are on the meadow (with your camera) when the first rays of the sun hit the mist over the meadow. Our problem was our small daughter, who was not a baby, yet a little too young to appreciate this type of excursion. No one else was terribly sold on the sceduled awakening time, and then my dad said he would go with me.
Early the next morning we dressed quietly and drove the car to the base of the meadow. We started up the road in the semi-dawn. It was all there, the scents; the sounds; the crisp air. By the time we reached the top of the meadow it was awash with dappled sunlight. We started down through the brush, our shoes darkening from soaking up the dew as we passed through the grass, when we startled our first fawn! He lept out of the bush like a slice of golden brown toast from a toaster - straight up - and darted quickly away. I am sure his mother had "stashed" him here (admonishing him to keep quiet and not move for any reason). Once he was 25 feet from us, he stopped to turn and look at us. What a sight we must have been, a man and a woman with black boxes stuck to their faces, their cameras making too-loud click-clicking noises while they ironically held their breath so as not to be heard!
More photos ensued, these were of wildflowers with droplets of dew, panoramas of the meadow still wearing the low thin cloud of fog; a group of three deer standing chest-deep in the low growth watching us watch them.
It was an almost surreal time, a wonderful time, a wonderful morning and yet it was only as we wandered back to the path that would take us back to the car that I realized it was Sunday - Father's Day.
"Happy Father's Day, Daddy" said the 40-something woman "Thank-you, Sweetheart" said the man "this has been a very nice morning" (which for my dad, is a rare expression of sentiment, that meant more to both of us than the actual words said).