Mary Filapek & Lou Ann Townsend

For a while, all we heard was the crunching of dirt and stone as we made our way to a patch of beautiful blooming echinacea. We spent an hour plucking out dead leaves and tiding up around the base of the plants to get that perfect shot. We moved rocks and driftwood into the frame to work out the composition we could feel, but couldn’t see. Suddenly the silence was broken by yips and howls. We looked up at each other over the tops of the echinacea and then out around the horizon. Slowly turning back to each other with a grin and saying in unison, “coyotes.”.“Well, that sun has a pretty good downward drift going on. I have gotten at least 50 shots of these guys – surely one will do the job. What do you say we head back?” Without a sound, we climbed back into the truck and headed towards home contented, quiet, and fully recharged.