(HI! Welcome to Caterpillar Steps, a newsletter by the writer and photographer Corbin Smith. I am trying something new this week that I hope to do every week into the future, a weekly survey of some of the literal tens of thousands of pictures I have taken of ducks over the years. Spoiler: there will also be non-duck pictures. I doubt I will employ subscriptions here, but if you like the newsletter and want help me buy a new camera lens, you can feel free to deposit some cheddar in my Venmo account, @BigCorbs. Also please share with anyone you think might enjoy it.)
The duck pond at Laurelhurst Park in SE Portland is a great duck shooting spot. The ducks are completely unafraid of human beings, which means I can use my smaller lens with a lower aperture instead of my normal birding lens which is much longer but also needs more light get the goods. The water in the pond is unnaturally green looking, very cool, and the light comes through the trees at very dramatic angles. I end up getting wild pics like the one above, high on texture and contrast. As you can see, today’s first duck is submerging her (Brown ducks are girls, green ducks are boys) feet in the water and preening. Imagine if we had a bunch of oil at the base of our heads and we could become waterproof if we moved the oil onto our hair. Naturally we would use our fingers, but ducks don’t have fingers, a necessary sacrifice to achieve the power of flight, so they instead use their beaks, which are on their heads, which swivel on a bunch of bones that, when you think about it, are kind of like gigantic single fingers with a duck brain inside.
I don’t know what kind of duck this gray duck is. It does not live at my local pond, and a cursory examination of the Washington State Game Warden’s website doesn’t tell me. The only place I see these fuckers is Laurelhurst. Did a domestic bird flee the coop and mate with a wild mallard and create this abomination against god and nature? Or is it just a duck I can’t ID? I am pretty sure the other ducks in this picture is Greyboy’s female counterpart, but, once again, I don’t actually know because this weird monolith looking dude was not on the game warden’s website. I just wanted to let everyone know that while I am an “Enthusiastic birder,” I am not an “Overwhelmingly informed birder,” and that there will be times where I can’t give you the knowledge you seek from cursory glances at every photo I post here.
My main weakness as a wildlife photographer is that I will drop anything to take pictures of squirrels. Once there was a dog playing in the fucking water right behind me, adorble shit, but i just could not pull myself away from a totally standard squirrel I was shooting. My favorite thing about squirrels is their dead, beady little eyes, omni-aware of the looming presence of death, trying to eke out just one more day on this rotten Earth, slowly being poisoned and destroyed by the big pink monoliths that wander around the world like big stupid idiots, acting like they’re not just squirrels. The panic soothes me.
Turtles have a lot of dignity. Evolving a shell to opt out of the rat race of kill kill kill food chain shit so you can just sort of sit around and contemplate was really a very clutch move. Human beings have built all this shit to opt out of the food chain and we are only primarily concerned with building more, so much that we, as I previously mentioned, destroying the planet and threatening mass suicide. What if we just lived our lives like the turtle, just vibing on sticks, away from bears and sharks and shit? My examination of this has led me to a crass reproduction of Buddhism, like all philosophies that aren’t like “No but what opting out of the food chain was BAD” eventually lead you.
This is the comedian Alex Falcone, performing at the inaugural Faded Portland comedy show last month. Here is a story about me and Alex. One time around 2013 I think, I was at my friend Tom’s bachelor party and we went to Ground Kontrol, a barcade in Downtown Portland. While we were there, the bar was hosting a comedy show. There were two fundamental problems with this show:
1. The show was happening in an arcade, surrounded by video games. Now I don’t know if you’re familiar with video games, but they are probably the single most enrapturing form of media ever made, all consuming, rewarding the player at every turn, significantly more compelling than ANY comedy show. I don’t quite know why the owners of Ground Kontrol thought that there was a need for an entertainment option that wasn’t video games when there were hundreds of video games just sitting there, begging to be played, pied pipering anyone in the world with a normal limbic system right into their doors.
2. Ground Kontrol has no stage or anything that is even close to a stage.
Anyway, between games I was drifting around the bar, and I noticed the comedy show and sort of engaged. No stage, no roped off area, nothing, pure teatrical chaos. Anyway I happened to get briefly hooked by the show while I was standing BEHIND the comic, who was Alex Falcone as seen above, holding water (I don’t drink) and laughing, just vibing out and enjoying myself. Falcone, who has CHOSEN to perform in this chaos, finds my violation of… something, I guess, once again, no stage, totally unacceptable, turns around, and gives me shit for laughing while standing behind him in this space where there were no theatrical rules, EMBARRASSING ME in front of everyone who is watching the show. You ask me? Just enjoy my laughter, which is hard earned, don’t shoo me away because I am violating the rules you decided on in lieu of any structure at all to any of this. Alex is a great comic but the oppression he brought down on me that night has haunted my dreams ever since. I will never truly forgive.