Saturday, October 27, 2012

Luck, Hope, and the End of the Trail

Last Saturday, I set off for Chickahominy Riverfront Park
in search of my own moment of serenity. 
And I discovered some absolutely bucolic, restful landscapes,
some obstacles in my path,
and some breathtaking waterviews--
the kind that makes one feel a small, 
bubbling sense of happiness at being alive in nature. 
I would say "joy," but I'm at heart a pessimist,
so I don't want to confirm that I felt joy just yet,
but it was close, very close.

But here's what I can confirm: 
when I looked at this next scene, 
I noticed something in the distance along the shore line--
a few white dots, virtually invisible in this photo:

I counted one, two, three, four ... seven white egrets
all in an evenly spaced row:

Seven is supposed to be a very lucky number
although I don't know if the sighting was really fortuitous.
Perhaps seeing seven white birds resting in a row does bring one good luck,
but the timing of this symmetry was one of those things 
that made me stop and marvel at the balance nature offers.

I turned to walk back up the bluff and saw these cypress knees along the river bank:

And here among them, growing persistently,
was this hopeful green seedling:

I could see autumn at its edges, 
but it exuded a sense of springtime optimism, 
popping up among the barren knees as it had.
I'm sure it expects to be a tall tree someday.
I hope it makes it.

I climbed to the bluff and took one last look:

 Very tranquil.
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