The morning mist in Chitwan National Park doesn’t rise; it creeps right out of the earth. By 5:00 AM, the sub-tropical canopy of southern Nepal is a suffocating shroud of gray, heavy with the scent of damp loam and the sharp, metallic tang of early morning dew. Hidden inside a collapsible ground blind—a small, pop-up camouflage tent designed to hide humans from wild animals—sat Paul Deen. A seasoned wildlife photographer who had spent the last five years documenting the elusive fauna of South Asia, Deen was no stranger to discomfort. This morning, his knees had been locked for three hours, his fingers numb around the rubberized grip of his camera.
His massive 600mm prime lens poked through a narrow slit in the camouflage netting, trained stubbornly on a clearing sixty yards away where a pair of rare Great Hornbills frequently fed. In Deen’s line of work, stillness is the only currency. To move is to go bankrupt. If a photographer makes a sound, the jungle forgets they were ever there and goes silent. But this morning, the silence that fell over the forest wasn’t normal. It was terrifying.