Mist Opportunity

Shooting deer in Japan

Dawn Deer —AI image by Imagen

Richard nudged me awake. “Time to rise and shine, honey!”

I groaned. “But it’s dark! Is there coffee?”

“The full moon is out there waiting for you,” he replied, “and dawn’s in half an hour. Come on, grab your camera and let’s go!”

I lifted the sheet. “Come here and give me a cuddle before we start.”

Richard had turned away, fiddling with his tripod, and I gave up, swinging my bare legs out of bed. Yes, I had promised to take a few shots of the Japanese dawn. Definite commercial possibilities there. But that had been last night, when a glass or three of a sweet red wine had put a glow on the prospect.

Outside, the moon was round and golden, sinking through the pines. Richard clicked a long lens onto his Canon and aimed it like a rifle. I pulled my jacket tighter. My Leica had a wide lens, and I was after the big picture.

“Let’s get out into the rice fields. More room there.”

I slipped my hand into his as we walked out of the inn garden. Two foreigners in a fantasy land. A little way down the street, the village houses stopped abruptly, the fields began, and Richard broke contact, raising his lens like a dog sniffing the air, taking a few quick shots of a bird freshly roused from sleep by the warmth of the sun, a distant mountain, a sleepy monk.

It was beautiful, I admitted to myself, as we walked on, our eyes seeking interesting shapes, patterns, colours. The dawn’s growing glow put a golden filter on the mist rising from the rice paddies, and the moon was almost on the horizon, dropping beyond the jagged peaks of the western range. I looked through my viewfinder and made a few pictures, searching for balance and harmony in the pastel fields.

It was strange how the crowded jumble of the village behind us contrasted with the serenity of the surrounding countryside. Folds of land rolled in the distance, a small shrine beside the road, the darkness of a pine grove silhouetted against the fog drifting in from the hidden sea to the east, now pierced with the first gleams of the sun.

Oh, these spring days!
A nameless little mountain,
wrapped in morning haze!

— Matsuo Bashō (1644–1694)

And yet, here was a laneway, not a building in sight, just a square grey transformer box and a row of vending machines. We both pointed our cameras at the incongruity, the hard forms lit from within, the colourful logos, the lines of bottles and cans, and beyond the machines nothing but nature in soft greens and dreamy pink sky.

“Coffee …” I sighed. Even a self-heating can of Boss Black would do.

“Later,” Richard said, gazing round for his next target. “Look, the trees …”

The small forest was drawing our eyes. I could see the photograph now. Something for a tourist brochure, a calendar maybe. If I got everything just right, a shot at Landscape of the Year award.

We trudged up the road, the slope giving a glimpse of the ocean, the pale disc of the sun a ghostly presence in the bank of sea fog.

The light was changing by the second as the sun rose higher, the tendrils of mist drifting through the trees, the moon now vanished behind the mountains.

“Look!” I breathed. “See, in front of the fence?”

As we clear a hill
Three deer bodies fill the dark
Between trees, still, bent

— Calvin Olsen (2017)

Three deer lifted their heads, regarding the intruders with suspicion. Richard clicked off a few rapid shots and the deer moved forward. Any second, and they’d bolt.

I pushed his lens down. “Just enjoy the moment, Ricky. You’ll spook them. Maybe we can get them closer.”

I clucked my tongue, holding out a hand as if it might have a treat in it. It had worked with the temple deer two days ago, maybe they would trot within range of my Leica.

Instead, the deer took fright and I sighed as they bounded off, their graceful forms lengthening as legs stretched and they soared away and over the fence.

Antlers folded in against their streamlined necks, thin wings extended from their flanks, rockets burst into roaring flame streaks as they shot out over the ocean. Three contrails against a pale blue sky.

Richard stood gaping, his camera aimed at the ground. He had missed the shot of a lifetime. I jingled a few yen coins in my pocket. “Buy you a can of coffee, dear?”

Britni

Originally published in Good Travel, Bad Sex