Sketches at Tarkiln Bayou

Detail from my sketch pad. This is supposed to portray the setting sun.

Sketching in nature is a lot different from photography. The results aren't as stunning; they usually aren't something you'd want to show off. They tend to be messy, hard to see, and not particularly artistic. A photograph is exact, beautiful, and colourful: an art form.

However, sketching is a much slower process. A photographer can rush through the underbrush, snapping away at whatever catches his or her fancy. A sketcher, by comparison, must sit in one place and carefully attempt to reproduce some small aspect or picture of the environment onto paper. This slower pace forces the sketcher to notice things that the photographer often misses. The shapes of the leaves and stems of plants become more interesting than the flowers. The silence of immobility sharpens underused senses. The salty smell of the bayou. The wailing of a family of loons. A sudden splash from a jumping mullet. These things become the focus--and how to portray them in art. A quiet yet lively mood, all on paper.

Sketch of the eastern shoreline of Tarkiln Bayou

While listening, watching, and smelling these things, I scribbled the shapes I could see around me onto the paper. Tarkiln Bayou was calm, a glassy series of rolling ripples sliding along the salty surface between the stems of the needle-rush. The loudest sound was the mullet, jumping periodically to clean their gills. But one splash caught my attention. A different tune in the rhythms of fish, bird, and plant. I focussed my attention on the north shore, where a series of ripples was racing out from the cover of a breeze swept strip in the bayou. The silver patch of water, reflecting the sky, appeared to be supporting the base of a growing V of white wave, it's tip picking up speed toward the shore. It ended in a spasm of splashes. This fast swimmer soon moved back out into the bayou, edging closer to me with methodical surfacing, puffing out a breath of air, a blow, at each rise. It was soon clear what had approached.

Sketches of a stump in the water.

The dolphin was one of several, the others working different parts of the shoreline. It would chase the mullet toward the reads and catch it near the shallows. Amazingly, the dolphin didn't eat it's catch immediately but, rather, playfully threw the wounded fish up into the air. Sometimes the fish would try to escape, and the dolphin would chase it again, seeming to enjoy the game it had created. I was feeling extremely blessed to observe such unique behaviour. The dolphin nearly swam right under the boardwalk, flippers sticking up in the air, glossy belly and under-tail gleaming whet as it threw its head back to fling the fish over it's chin. Once the fish was no longer able to perform any "live entertainment," the dolphin presumably swallowed its catch and repeated a race into the shoreline for another mullet. Of course I feel a little bad for the mullet, but I was completely overwhelmed with joy. Fun and games is a characteristic of intelligence and character. Both qualities are possessed by dolphins and it was a real privilege to observe it first hand.

Sketches of water and plants at Tarkiln Bayou.

As the blows of the dolphins grew faint, and the light was fading from the horizon, I sang to my fluttering heart and danced back to my vehicle. A truly magical moment, to meet someone so different that could consider my existence, just as I consider his. I wonder if he even saw me.