New Legs Hurrying to Keep UP!
You can sense their urgency, can’t you? What they are hurrying to or from, we don’t know. What we see is Mom’s strong legs striding swiftly across the pond. Newborn babies’ legs struggling to bend much less keep up, water bouncing in their faces, not understanding where they are going or even where they are, just letting instinct take hold. And there it is, a fleeting moment of action in the small gap between branches, a gap just wide enough for a camera lens.
So that’s the story, right—hurrying moose, tiring babies, patient (or maybe just lucky) photographer????? No, sorry, the story is about much more. It’s about a gift.
Early one morning in Grand Teton National Park we made our way from Wilson up toward Colter Bay. As we traveled the main park highway another driver, way over the speed limit, almost careened into us as he passed. Now he definitely was in a HURRY. Then, at the Moran park entrance, behold this same driver was in line for the entrance and seemed to have abandoned his sense of urgency, replacing it with what seemed to be 100’s of questions for the ranger. The line behind him grew and grew and grew. Do you feel the impatience mounting? Surely you’ve been in a similar circumstance—you try to remain calm with a no big deal attitude about the wait, but as the minutes tick away, some alien presence of total impatience comes vibrantly alive inside you—even though, you REALLY have no time schedule of where to be! Psychologists call this the “hurry disease”—but no time for that now, more in another post.
Finally (you hear the deep sigh and eye roll, don’t you??), our exasperating driver moves forward and we get past the entrance. As we continue north thru a dense forested area near Colter Bay, happenstance, or what I believe was a nudge from the Creator, causes a quick look to the right into the woods. And there, silhouetted among the trees, is this mom, hurrying thru the forest with her almost newborns trying to keep up. A small pond was nearby and she was headed that way. We knew we had one chance and once chance only at something special. Not wanting to bother mom or the calves—and staying the request yards away—we only had one short opportunity to capture her—two quick clicks of the camera.
And, by now, I am sure you get the real story—we would have completely missed this beautiful moment had we not experienced that frustrating delay at the park entrance. Sometimes what we think of as “wasted” moments aren’t that at all. Instead they are God’s gift, his speed bump in time, making sure that we are aligned in the right place and time to see the moments He handcrafted just for us!
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