Let There Be Light

For the last several days—I guess because the temperatures in northern New Mexico are reaching lows that typify most winter days in central Texas—my thoughts have been on those glorious, frosty mornings that invigorate me. It’s still fall here at 7000 feet, although snow is on the mountain tops. The Aspens have just about finished their autumnal work, although the cottonwoods are showing off at lower elevations, including here in Santa Fe. I’ve made trips to Abiquiu and Cordova recently. The scene along the river is golden. I wrote what follows in early December two years ago. Memories are not limited to time and place.

December 6, 2005. Today, I was reminded of winter in an unexpected way. I had spent the night in Columbus with friends who own a bed and breakfast, where we enjoyed a fire both last evening and again this morning. Braced with coffee, good conversation and intent on a mission over in another county that had grown out of our conversation, I made my way through this entirely rural area of rolling hills, pastureland turned now to autumn yellow, and cattle. Seeing cattle in rural Texas ordinarily is nothing to take particular note of, although the site of a herd of Longhorns or Herefords is attention getting. I haven’t thought much about the visual impact of a herd of cattle, but on this pre-winter morning a herd of Gray Brahmans quietly and slowly making their way across an autumn yellow field captured my eye and caused me to pause, considering a digital memory. I was on a mission, remember, and though I was going down the road a little farther, I knew that shortly I would capture this Canon, or old-fashioned Kodak, moment.

My official business complete, I headed back up the road, wrestling with my camera bag, only to discover what I thought was a battery in need of a charge. “Damn!” I said out loud, probably adding a “Give me a break!,” discovering happily while trying not to run into the ditch that the battery wasn’t dead at all—instead, still in the charging device waiting to do its job.

Given the skiddish nature of Brahmans (in the northwest Harris County country where I grew up, I am accustomed to hearing that word pronounced “Braymers” or even “Brimmers”), I expected that I would have to step silently through the ditch to the fence line to avoid sending them into cattle-thundering flight. I had noticed at my first pass the virtually upright horns of many members of this herd. It was this notice that caused me to think of those Braymers I remembered on my grandmother and uncle’s place as I young child—old-fashioned Braymers. To my surprise, they stood quietly as I approached the fence, and seemed totally at ease with my presence and my camera. They stood in pose, heads held high, feet planted solidly in the frosty grass of this December morning, gray Brahmans against glistening light. Let there be light.

So often, pictures are disappointing, especially outdoor scenes, when on review we say, “Why did I take that? Oh well, I guess you had to be there.” Not this day. When I got home and loaded the images onto my laptop, I saw what I hoped I had captured—lovely gray cattle, some with horns reaching for the sky, others with horns that had been tipped, and some with no horns at all, all facing the camera proudly, curiously, dark hooves set against the evidence of winter to come on this sunny December morning. Let there be light.

Let There Be Light
Harold Hollis (Normangee Texas – December 6, 2005)