WISDOM OF OSCAR



This story, by Ron McEwan has everything—humor, pathos, and a wonderful lesson about little dogs! Ron hails from the great state of Missouri.

Ron McEwan

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I'd love to know what you think of the "Relentless Pursuit" series.  Please leave a comment below or email me with your suggestions on what you'd like to see on this blog.  Also, contact me if you have a story to post here.  And be sure to take a look at my photography site.  I'd love to hear from you!

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  Michelle Alton

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Wisdom of Oscar


It was a beautiful fall morning in October 2009. The sky was clear after a stunning sunrise; the air crisp enough to sting the nostrils. Your breath would hang in the air for moments, before dissipating.  Oscar, our loyal four-legged sidekick was anxious to be out of the truck and hiking down a trail in the Red River Gorge in Kentucky. He loves to sniff and poke his nose into every hole and crack that comes along.




Oscar (Photo by Ron McEwan)


We love these hikes because we get our well needed exercise and the photo opportunities are invariably more numerous than those along the Interstate.

Photo by Ron McEwan

Arriving at the trail head, I got myself loaded up with all the camera gear (that I won’t use 99 percent of the time). Fellow photographers will chuckle here. I have been down too many trails, caught without the right lens. It’s the familiar sad story of the shot that got away!

By now Oscar was pulling on the leash to get going. We have to keep him on a leash because he will be out of sight before you know it, most likely never to be seen again. Because he is a dachshund and hunting is bred into him, his 18 pounds of small stature becomes 500 pounds of bad attitude when something catches his eye! Dachshunds will not back off; they will stay focused until they win or die trying!

At last we were heading off down the trail, looking for a natural bridge in the Red River Gorge. We knew that it would be difficult to find because photos of it are rarely found in most photographers’ archives.

It was a fun hike, rubber necking along, shooting photos everywhere I looked. Beautiful fall colors, vistas from overlooks and all of God’s creations appeared around every bend.

Photo by Ron McEwan

Arriving at a point on the trail about two miles in that should have been close to the natural bridge, I was standing on top of the ridge. But I wanted to get a better view from a lower point of view.

Photo by Ron McEwan

Then the adventure started to unfold. We stepped off the trail onto a path that was barely visible and arrived at a “T” intersection. My wife, Shirley, thought we should go left. I said that we should go right. After 26 years in the Army with night compass training, I know “which way is up!”  So we took the path on the right.

Things began to change rapidly. With Oscar on a leash, I was strapped with cameras and other equipment. The trail became so narrow that we were sliding along the cliff with our feet pointing 180 degrees from each other. Oscar adamantly refused to take another step forward. So I picked him up and carried him.

This was getting to be too much. Protecting the camera, carrying a dog that does not want to go further and also trying to push mountain laurel away from my face, we concentrated on trying to keep our feet from slipping off the ledge, a hundred feet or more above the valley floor. At last we found the end of the trail, but we did NOT find the natural bridge. And for lack of a better description, we were standing on a giant rock peninsula.

Photo by Ron McEwan

So we turned back with Shirley now leading the way, muttering something like “We should’ve went left,” and I was embarrassed to realize, and to be told that I really don’t know everything.

By now Shirley was carrying Oscar. He was terrified of being so high up with barely enough room on the trail for him to walk. A dog can often be smarter than humans; they know their limits and learn to live with them.

As fast as a blink of an eye, actually faster because I saw it happen, the ledge gave way. Shirley and Oscar were gone. My first thought was that I lost the love of my life and my best friend all at the same time. There was no sound of any kind. Shirley and Oscar had disappeared in a flash!

Photo by Ron McEwan

Shirley fell perhaps 11 or 12 feet straight down. She had fallen onto another ledge into a pile of leaves and pine needles-- a blessing! She landed on her rump, still holding Oscar. If she had not held onto him, he would have fallen another hundred feet or so down.

It took some careful maneuvering to get down to them without falling myself. It had rained a lot that month, and everything was soft, so grabbing onto small brush was dangerous, because it might pull out from the water-soaked soil. Eventually, we made it.

Besides our prides being wounded, Shirley had pain spiking in her hip for a week or two afterward. But all seems well now.  She missed the hikes we were planning with a couple of photographers that I know from posting on Betterphoto.com, Randy Dinkins and Carol Fowler. We hiked for a couple of days down into Cumberland Falls. Shirley read a book while sitting by herself in the truck.

We did not get a picture of the Natural Bridge, but we learned a lot from that hike. Do not “push the envelope on a hike. If you have a dog with you, don’t ignore his signals! Pay attention to his wisdom because it just might save your life one day!




Shirley, Ron, and Oscar  (Photo by Ron McEwan)





 Ron's Bio:

I’m a retired soldier, with 26 years of service, living again in my home town halfway between Kansas City and Springfield, Missouri.

Also, I am an avid amateur photographer, that applies very little editorial enhancements. I have learned that a bad shot is a bad shot!  I have loved photography ever since the eighth grade when I purchased my first little 8-dollar brownie camera. I thought I had paid a fortune, and even to
keep film going through it was a financial struggle.

Today I enjoy just about any photo op. I am drawn to high overlooks and vistas and wild flowers as I go along the trails. And am always looking for the out of the way places that are not often photographed. I do travel as much as I can as long as the money holds out.

Ron McEwan



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IN RELENTLESS PURSUIT

In Relentless Pursuit!

Thinking back from this juncture in middle-age, it is impossible to remember a time when I could snap a camera shutter without experiencing a rush of joy and the tingling anticipation of finally seeing the image that was captured with that click. In these digital days, we are able to press the shutter button and then experience immediate gratification, as the image is presented to us on the camera’s LCD screen, and then on our computer’s beautiful monitor. But if we’ve lost the sting of anticipation, our mission has now become a relentless and endless pursuit: Capture the perfect image, no matter what it takes!



And sometimes it takes more than we expected. Over the years, I’ve exchanged the “misadventures of intrepid pursuit” with my fellow photographers, and the stories never fail to have us wiping the tears of laughter from our eyes. So with this new twist on the “Silver Lining” theme, I’m inviting all photographers – or anyone with an amusing anecdote of Relentless Pursuit – to send me your story, and if it’s the right sort of story (if it elicits empathetic chuckles or tugs on my heartstrings), I’ll post it on this blog. I’ll add photos that I think enhance the theme, and also include your photos with the story, if you send them. Before I publish the story, I’ll send it back to you for your approval or final edits.



To get this new theme off the ground, I offer this story of my own—one of my favorites: I call it, “Faces in the Sycamore.”

House on the Hill

Our house sits at the top of a considerable hill,  strewn with a variety of nearly 100 magnificent trees, some of which tower majestically above a natural pond at the bottom of the hill.  Four sprawling London Plane Sycamore trees are placed near the pond and as gorgeous as they are, they create huge messes during every season—fallen branches in winter, ubiquitous seed pods in Spring, large hunks of stripped bark in the Summer, and a plethora of spiny sycamore “balls” in the autumn, along with the myriad brown crunchy dead leaves.  But gorgeous they are, despite the high maintenance that they require. With strong, graceful branches stretching out in all directions from their hefty trunks, and the textured, dappled bark covering the strangely bumpy wood, they are fascinating creations of Mother Nature.



Faces in the Sycamore

It was perhaps ten years ago, when I stood, camera in hand before one of the sycamores near the pond, and discovered that there were faces and whole people “growing” on that tree. The more I stared, the more figures I could see, popping out at me from every direction. It was amazing! Stories about how each figure become "imbedded" in the tree began forming in my impressionable mind and I was losing touch with my other surroundings, as you will learn.



Soon I discovered that if I stood back a bit, the figures “in the tree” would pop even more, so with my eye to the viewfinder, I inched back, little by little, until the perfect view appeared to me. Just one more little step backward and. . .


Suddenly I had run out of pavement and was falling backward, down about four feet, onto the debris strewn stony spillway behind the pond’s dam!



Spillway: Whence I fell

My first thought as I came to my senses was “Whew!” for my camera had luckily landed safely on my nicely-padded stomach.  Miracles do happen!   My second thought was, “I haven’t cracked my skull open,” and my third thought was more ominous:  “I wonder if any of the neighbors witnessed this bit of unintentional slapstick.”  So, slowly, I pulled myself together and crept gingerly to my feet.  Standing in the spillway, with just my eyes peering above the spillway wall, I panned the neighborhood and concluded that my silly blunder had most likely gone unobserved.  (If a tree falls in the forest and nobody hears it, did it make a noise?)

And then I noticed a slight throbbing in my right index finger, which had not been as lucky as my camera and somehow had landed under my butt at the bottom of the spillway. Very very slowly and fearfully, I directed my gaze to my now aching finger. My stomach began to turn as I took in what had happened: The finger was bent at the middle joint—but in the wrong direction. It was badly dislocated. The queasiness in my stomach turned to dizziness, and I sat down on the spillway floor to regain my composure. But wait! Even with my finger painfully pointing back at me in the wrong direction, my first priority was go have a "gimp" at the newest shots.   Were those faces captured by my lens?


The author, among London Plains Sycamores at Sayen Gardens, Hamilton, New Jersey

Inspired?  I'd love to post your stories here.  If it catches on, we may have a book down the road.  Send me your tales, along with a few photos, if you have them.  I'll add some if I see fit, and send you the draft for final edits and your approval.  I'm excited...I KNOW there are some GREAT stories out there.  Let's do it!


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All photographs, unless otherwise
indicated are by Michelle Alton

Please visit my photo website: "Your Best Shot," and sign up to join the mailing list to receive new gallery announcements, product info and photography/Photoshop tips:

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