The weather is as indecisive as a ten-year-old kid trying to choose a flavor at Baskin Robbins. The clouds are low and ashen. A low ceiling of cold gray hovers above the hood of my blue rain shell. Snow or rain? Snow or rain? Make a decision, dammit.
In May, Pruhonice Park, the 250-acre botanical gardens twenty miles outside of Prague with more than sixteen hundred local and exotic plant species, would be bursting with pinks and oranges and reds. Sargent’s Cherry blossoms painting the pebbled pathways. Rhododendrons guarding the ponds. Tints and hues so mesmerizing it would prompt a landscape artist to prop up his easel and spill oil all over his canvas. But in January, this UNESCO World Heritage Site only inspires the artist to stay in bed and catch some additional shuteye.
I’m in the Czech Republic in winter with a camera and a free day. Despite skies and lighting that’s as interesting as cold porridge, I’m not about to waste it in my hotel room.
As I strain to heave my backpack full of camera gear over my shoulders, the driver who drove me to the park, Jan, looks at me with doubtful eyes. I can read his thoughts. Crazy photographer! On the ride to Pruhonice, I’d mentioned optimistically that I’d heard there were foxes in the park. “Maybe,” he’d said wet with skepticism.
“I might be several hours,” I tell him as I slide the door closed to the black Mercedes van.
“I better give you my number,” he says. “In case…” Jan doesn’t finish his sentence, and I am determined to disprove his lack of faith.
As I pass the gatehouse and enter the park, the rain transforms into giant snowflakes that begin carpeting the trail before me. Mother Nature is going to serve up a beautiful winter scene out of Frozen after all. Or so I think.
As stated, my hope was to capture wildlife. Ideally, a red fox with glittering eyes on a snowy berm or a slippery otter slinking across a frozen pond. What I discover are birds chittering in the trees, an occasional woodpecker drumming on a limb, and a couple of ordinary ducks hunkered down by a creek. Hardly anything worth sticking my eye to the viewfinder for.
I have to adjust my plans and expectations for the morning. I find a bench under the umbrella of a Japanese Cedar, shed my backpack and quickly exchange my telephoto lens for wider glass. And just as I make the switch, the weather does, too. One degree can make all the difference, and now the downy snow crystals have returned to their dismal, liquid form. I unzip my jacket and tuck my camera and wide-angle zoom inside to minimize their saturation.
But with the teetertottering of temperatures arises an unforeseen magic. A mist begins to permeate the voids between the Norway Spruce and the endangered Redwoods. A silent, ghostly fog unfurls across the open glades. Dew blossoms on the spruce needles
I unsheathe my DSLR from beneath my jacket.
Like that seventh-grade girl with braces who arrives the first day of eighth grade a stunning beauty, the landscape transforms its awkward dreariness into a display worthy of a beauty pageant crown.