Once in a lifetime
A Cheyenne elder of my acquaintance once told me that the best way to find something is not to go looking for it… he said to watch out of the corner of your eye, open to possibility, and what you seek will be revealed. The revelation of suddenly seeing what I was blind to only moments before is a sublime experience for me. I can revisit those moments and still feel the surge of expansion. The boundaries between my world and the world of another being get pushed back with sudden clarity l, an experience both humbling and joyful.
Robin Wall Kimmerer
There are certain things you can and should seek in life, and, if you faithfully do so, you will find them: friendship, love, contentment with what you already have, beauty in the “simplest,” smallest things. But there are some things — often magical or miraculous — that come to us unexpectedly. They appear to us out of the corner of our eye.
Just such an astonishing and unexpected gift was presented to me the other day. Sometimes, the most sublime things in Nature are not waterfalls or sunsets, but “little things.”
I have been blessed with the ability to both seek, and unexpectedly discover, these treasure sin Nature. And I have long prided myself in being able to find beauty everywhere. I have been born with this gift, thankfully, but also I have trained myself to observe the world around me carefully, and a lifelong passion for photography has opened my eyes to wonders both large and small that I might not otherwise have seen or appreciated.
The other day, I was coming out of the cavernous, warehouse emporium of my local Costco. I turned left to the sidewalk across from the parking lot. As I started to speed up with my cart, something unusual caught my eye. Alongside the store’s huge, outside wall were a series of small camellia bushes. Most of them have bloomed and the flowers were long gone, for they are winter flowers.
Nevertheless, I saw one last camellia, but with something different about it. As I came in closer to see what was going on, I saw this:
Once in a lifetime. I will always treasure this photo.
Oh, how lovely!
@catholicchristian Thank you!
Warning Comment
I love this so much…how cool to find that. Again, I love the way you look at life and how you can see the beauty in things. You encourage me to do the same.
@happyathome. Your words make me happy. It’s always nice when I can share my little visions of life and what brings me joy.
Warning Comment
Well, THAT’s pretty unusual! I try to notice things in nature as well. It’s the unexpected that is the coolest.
@startingover_1 Yes, those wondrous surprises that Nature offers us out of the blue, bring such a sense of fulfillment, as does the photo of that tiny frog in the Camellia. 🙂
Warning Comment
This is really cool! What a gift to have caught that!
@onlysujema Totally! I will long remember that experience. I was at Costco last night, and of course, no trace of the camellia. The little frog had a very temporary home, but a beautiful one.
Warning Comment