A Change of Scenery

Yesterday I went for a walk to the duckpond, a familiar place to the inhabitants of my town. I brought a pocket camera with me, as I was hoping to snap some shots of the budding spring. I started gazing at the Magnolia trees, the daffodils, hyacinths, forsythia and budding maples. No shots here, I thought to myself, I have been photographing these sights of beauty for years now. It still gave me joy to see the colors, but I walked on. I started to notice everything around me as if I saw it for the first time. I always notice Nature that way but today was different. I saw an odd array of things on my walk... funny things that made me wonder. On the side of the road was an old discarded dishtowel, crumpled and faded a to a pinkish rust color. It looked like an old man in a turban and so I snapped a photo. Next I came to a small tree at the edge of a firehouse parking lot. There was a big black rubber slip-on shoe (probably a women's size 10) hanging from one of the bare branches of the little tree. I thought, How do you lose one shoe, who put it there, and why?... my active imagination got the best of me and I cracked myself up with a story. When I came upon the sloping view to the pond itself, I saw that someone had left two dirty white lawn chairs by the bank. Both were knocked over backwards in a haphazard way and it seemed the scene of an angry exit... again a short story was imagined. A little further down the road there was an old tree that was spray painted with a rainbow of green and orange, over a hole in the base of the tree. Perhaps it was tagged to be removed, by why so colorful?... then I just assumed that leprechauns were doing some decorating... and smiled. My last photo was of a women's drab beige crocheted winter hat with two big buttons sewn into the front. I could only imagine that if a child were made to wear the ugly thing... it would be intentionally lost in no time. The hat was placed on a fence post in front of someone's yard making it look even more forlorn and frumpy in the surrounding spring. I imagined the face of the ancient person to who it belonged and figured it would be silly for them to retrieve it now. I couldn't wait to bring the photos to life at home in my computer lab. Nature gives me lots of pleasure as I walk, but these funny things stimulated my imagination... and may provide stories for later pleasure.