GRIZ BEAR COMMENTS

Mysterious images of the past

I don't know if it is all the late-night hours I spent in a patrol car on empty highways in rural Kansas or if it is the late nights, or all nights, in a truck crossing the high plains, but I am somewhat of a night person. It's not that I don't like the early mornings, but it’s hard to get up and get going before sunrise when a fellow has been up a good part of the night enjoying the quiet solitude.

Mrs. Griz is just the opposite. She believes in early-to-bed and early-to-rise and is often getting up to begin her day shortly after I crawl into bed to end mine. Though she pokes fun at me for liking to sleep in until 7:30 or so in the morning when she rises by 5 and often earlier, staying up late does give me opportunity to get a lot of work done I can't seem to finish during the day.

Though I don't normally go out late at night, it is sometimes interesting to take night-time photos with a tripod and long time exposures. Sometimes the camera will record things my eyes can't see.

I remember once taking storm pictures at night on a hilltop back in northwestern Kansas. Since there was quite a bit of lightning in the storm headed toward me, I hoped to record a few lightning strikes on the prairie with some long exposures. Since I had a digital camera that night, I could immediately view the images my camera recorded.

I didn't catch the sharp image of a lightning strike, but the frequent flashes of light in the clouds did reveal something else I couldn't see with my eyes - a tornado was headed my way. Since the storm was getting closer, I decided to hurry home and to shelter.

On another sleepless night, just a few days ago when the moon was bright and full, I headed out west of town to take some photos by moonlight. It is amazing how much the moon illumines if you just give it a chance and leave the shutter open for long enough to capture animage. Depending on the exposure times, images can appear dark and shadowy or almost as bright as if taken in daylight.

Anyway, I set up my camera toward this old, abandoned farm place and opened the shutter, hoping no one would come driving down the country road with their bright lights on before the exposure was finished - it seems someone is always out driving the byways late at night, making me look stupid for trying to take pictures in the dark and, worse yet, ruining my long exposures.

It was quiet this night. I wasn't caught like a deer in the headlights and the exposures were going well, with several taken at different exposure values and only one longer one to do. The moon was still shining, though clouds sometimes drifted in front of it and dimmed its light.

Even though no one came driving down the lonely country road at that hour, I still had this feeling someone was there. I can't explain it, but it just made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end.

I recognized the cough warning call of deer and heard several bound away past me and into a field behind me though I couldn't see them in the moonlight. I know that sound and am not usually alarmed by it. But if the deer were frightened by me, why did they run right past me on their way to the field behind me?

They must have seen something with their night vision which I couldn't see. I wondered what that could be?

"Another minute or two should do it," I thought.

While a 30-minute exposure seems unbelievably long, it only lets in little more than five times as much light as a one-second exposure.

As I waited quietly, listening for deer, I thought I could hear whispering voices in front of me. I strained to see into the night, but nothing was there.

With a click and the slap of the camera mirror, the shutter finally closed. I decided to load up my camera while it processed the image and get started on my drive home.

I pulled into my driveway and shut off my car and sat there in the night. Reaching over to the passenger seat, I picked up my camera and pushed a few buttons so that I could see the result of my long wait with camera and tripod.

The first images revealed the shadowy figures of an old house without windows and a barn with a sagging open door and missing boards on its sides. But the longest exposure revealed something I never expected.

Tied up in the trees between the two old buildings, there were horses. And just inside the old barn, silhouetted by moonlight coming through the windows, were men wearing tattered uniforms and wrapped in wool blankets, some lying on the ground and others sitting at the entrance with muzzleloading rifles in their hands and looking out into the moonlit night straight toward me and my camera.

It's amazing, sometimes, what's there that we just don't see!

I got out of my car and headed for the house, but before I reached the door, I heard the sound of horse hooves pounding the ground and running past me toward the west. I strained my eyes to see into the darkness but could see nothing. I listened intently and watched, thinking, perchance, I might catch a glimpse of something in the moonlight, but nothing!

Then to my shock and horror, I heard rifle fire and screaming to the west, and an orange glow appeared in the sky where I had been a short time ago with my camera.

In the daylight I returned to where I had taken photos the night before. It was just an open field with some old stone foundations, blackened by what must have been a fire years and years ago.

Randy Moll is the managing editor of the Westside Eagle Observer. He may be reached by e-mail at rmoll@ nwaonline.com.

Opinion, Pages 6 on 10/26/2011