For five years, I’ve spent mornings returning to the same 241-step boardwalk at Reeds Lake in East Grand Rapids. More than 250 visits later, I’m still surprised by what waits around the next bend.
This image was made on an autumn morning when the lake seemed determined to show off. Peak color had arrived overnight. The shoreline was painted in shades of red, orange, and gold, while a thin layer of mist hovered just above the water’s surface. The scene felt almost too perfect to be real.
Then a lone mute swan drifted into view.
One of the lessons Reeds Lake has taught me is that nature rarely follows a script. You can study the weather, watch migration forecasts, and arrive with a plan, but the moments that stay with you are often the ones you never anticipated. On this morning, the swan became the final piece of a scene I didn’t know I was waiting for.
As a photographer, it’s easy to become focused on action and behavior. Birds doing something. Chasing, feeding, courting, or defending territory. But places like Reeds Lake remind me that there’s value in simply being present. Sometimes the reward isn’t a dramatic moment, but a quiet one — a bird moving through beautiful light, a reflection, a patch of fog, or a landscape transformed by the changing season.
This photograph ultimately became one of my favorite images from “The Splendor Next Door,” my upcoming book documenting five years of birds, wildlife, and changing seasons at Reeds Lake. More than anything, I hope my work represents what the project has been about from the beginning: showing that extraordinary moments don’t always require extraordinary places. Sometimes they can be found close to home, waiting for us to slow down, pay attention, and notice. 
Steve Jessmore is a Kent County-based bird photographer whose work documents birds, freshwater ecosystems, and vanishing habitat throughout the Great Lakes region. His first book is available in October at stevejessmore.com. “I spent more than 250 mornings on a boardwalk experiencing birds and nature. The book (‘The Splendor Next Door’) tells that story,” he says.
