Jon Sienkiewicz Blog

I saw seven white tail deer—one was a ten-point buck—in my neighborhood earlier this week and all were wearing their dark, thick winter coats. One of the babies was wearing an Eddie Bauer goose down vest. A couple had Polartec leg warmers. Looked like they were getting ready to hunker down for a long, cold winter.

There are so many acorns covering the backyard of my New Jersey home that the local squirrels have brought in a carloads of illegal immigrant squirrels to help them harvest the crop. You should see it—we have a multicultural menagerie of furry rodents jabbering in seven or eight different dialects of Squirrelish.

Even my pine trees (I have lots of trees) are dropping cones like a Cubs outfielder drops fly balls. They know that the next few months are going to be brutal, and they are making every effort to make sure that their DNA survives, even if they don’t.

Okay, well, I may be exaggerating just a wee bit. Not by very much, though. I’m not a believer of the Farmer’s Almanac but I do believe that Mother Nature somehow—in some imperceptible way—sends her animals and plants an Emergency Alert that we humans are too busy to receive.

So I’ve decided to activate Winter Defcon Nine and bring into play all of the contingency plans that I drafted over the last embarrassingly too many years. That’s right. I am going to ask Santa Claus for a new coat.

Not just any coat you understand. I’m going after the best: the Gitzo Four Seasons jacket. It’s so cool! Err –warm? It has pockets galore: two large exterior pockets, two smaller exterior pockets, one large exterior rear pocket, two interior cargo pockets, and a number of smaller inside pockets for pens, my borrowed iPod, a GPS unit, cell phone and much more. It’s practical, protective, and positively will allow you to comfortably carry more camera gear than you could ever possibly need.

The Gitzo Four Seasons jacket is fully waterproof and made of Teflon treated Cordura and Ecodry fabrics with fully sealed seams. Those of you who live in temperate climates may not fully understand the importance of keeping your body warm when the mercury dips below the freezing point. Having grown up in Chicago where I once experienced three consecutive weekends of -30 degree temperatures (I’m not making this up—I wish I were) I know the value of a warm coat.

So, Santa—is there is room on your sleigh? Do you think you could wrangle one of these really cool photographer’s jackets for me? I promise to be no worse than last year. And if I get a really cool candid shot of one of your reindeer (remember the shot of Blitzen on New Years?) I’ll send it to you before I upload it to Fotolia.

—Jon Sienkiewicz