Sometimes, as I'm cycling along, I'll see something and feel a pull, actually it's usually more than a pull, it's almost like an incessant, unfulfilled need, to record the something through the lens of my camera. Today, that something was a tree. Maybe this tree became my fixation because Angel Baby and I watched
Guardians of the Galaxy last evening and I fell in love with Groot (the idea of a tree being, not the actor playing the tree being). Or maybe this particular tree spoke to me because it is so different than the other trees around it, and I tend to be drawn to that which is different. I was once asked, way back in high school, after moving to a new home and thus starting as a freshman at a new school, if I had been popular at my old school. I remember shrugging, saying I wasn't unpopular. The girl asking the question kind of cocked her head at me, giving me a bit of a quizzical look, then said, "I can see why you were popular. You're different." For whatever reason, that comment has stayed with me all these years, and I have come to understand I do search out and embrace the "different."
So I circled this tree, searching for angles, lighting, shadows, composition. I couldn't get enough of the wispy, somewhat swirly clouds in the background, thinking they were singing hallelujah just for this tree because they could see the gloriousness of it. I stood near the trunk, underneath the lowest branch, and admired the red leaves mingling with the still green leaves. When I lowered my camera, when I turned to face the trunk, I could feel the vibrations of life. And in those vibrations, I experienced a sweet contentment with where I was right at that moment. There was no other place I needed to be, no other place I wanted to be except right there, beside a beautiful work of nature.
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