None of my photos are as close-up, glossy, right there with you as the alert yet resting bird Nowhere Magazine paired with my story, “Of a Feather.” But I did see flamingos in Patagonia a couple of years ago, and I did take pictures. And it did start me thinking about other flamingos I had seen, or hoped to see. My son thought I was maybe overdoing it. How many pictures did I really need? (Had he see flamingos before then? Not in the wild.)
I remembered the Galapagos. I remembered all those lawn ornaments. I thought of flamingos as tropical, but we were shivering in the breeze that afternoon in El Calafate. We’d just been to the ice museum. But memory and story sometimes mix and match. And so I started the story, or went back to it, back to that not-quite-seasick-making boat in the islands. 