William Hazlitt

Come forth into the light of things. Let Nature be your teacher.

William Wordsworth

It was a typically beautiful Saturday afternoon at the nature preserve, a 600-acre swamp, marsh, and coastal plain hardwood forest — a mini-wilderness, so to speak — only minutes from the immense labyrinth of urban sprawl that surrounds me. Its stillness and remoteness are deceptive once one enters the gates and travels a dirt and gravel road to the visitor center from whence trails spike out in every direction.

It was still that day with little wind. Reflections on the water surfaces were fascinating as I tried to capture with my camera the images which gave such complexity and depth to these natural features of the landscape. There is something surreal and quite beautiful about the mirror images of trees, grasses, reeds, clouds, and leaves reflected in perfectly still water. And when a slight breeze barely stirs the surface, the images take on other shapes and designs, patterns and inverse illusions.

Happy to be outdoors, I kept looking up at the skies to the high clouds which nevertheless let in a lot of sunlight. I stopped for a while on the dike separating brackish and freshwater wetlands to observe a group of herons in the branches of trees, their feathers gently ruffled by the sightest movement of wind, their gaze outward over water to the woods. I approached closer than I imagined I could with my binoculars to watch them perched in the branches. Serene, regal. They are masters of their world, whether resting atop the trees or wading gracefully in shallow water, artfully nabbing little fish and crustaceans in their beaks.

As I approached they would float off to another tree with exquisite motions of their beautiful wings, as seamless as an uninterrupted dream about flight.

From the marshes and waterfowl area, I made my way past the woods at the end of the preserve and into the pines and mixed hardwoods at the south end of the cypress swamp. Choosing to head back past the site of the old settlement and toward the parking lot via a shorter route, I turned at the big live oak tree with my favorite bench beneath it. At exactly a certain spot, each time I have been there at about 4 in the afternoon, the sun illumines with silvery brilliance the tiny leaves on a patch of shrubs about 8 feet high that form a small island in a cleared area just to the side of the oak tree. It is quite a startling sight to observe this suddenly lit-up of patch of shrubs, glowing in sunlight as if transmuted by the silvery light of a moon instead of the waning light of the sun in a clearing of grass and weeds. Ten steps farther along,I looked back to see only a dull, olive-gray cluster of shrubs, almost unnoticeable. Moments before it was a glowing ball of light.

Ah, so peaceful a walk. Not another person in sight. No sounds but the rustling of leaves underfoot. Not even the sound of wind in the trees.

”Magic” bushes described above:

https://flic.kr/p/DU9jeW

https://flic.kr/p/Eiokwp

https://flic.kr/p/EPxKud

Autumn at the nature preserve 2022

https://www.flickr.com/gp/camas/02Afj34Lj0

When the ordinary becomes sublime

https://www.flickr.com/gp/camas/o2AJWfL298