My Blue(bill) Heaven

Divers & geese in central Alberta

God, that's incredible," Rick Stoeckel whispered. He gazed at a thin orange line where the sun soon would rise over 90 square miles of placid shallow water in central Alberta. The black, spruce-studded horizon was an axis of symmetry about which narrow bands of flame expanded slowly outward to cover vast reaches of violet. He was right. It was incredibly beautiful. We had risen in darkness to drive a logging road through a grouse wood, and then donned waders and hiked through muskeg to the reeds that encircle Chip Lake.

Click here for your FREE trial issue

,September-October