Sometimes you can miss the beauty in life when you fail to take it in all around you. Saturdays I usually take a longer bike ride. I head toward a marina along Scotts Creek. The road that takes me there is Harper Avenue, actually a private road owned by the CSX Railroad. Last week, I showed you all the Queen Anne's Lace that grows along these tracks. The picture you see above is Harper Avenue's opposite side. This area teems with egrets, Cooper's hawks, foxes, and rabbits.
If you were straddling your bike from the picture's perspective and looked over your shoulder, you would see locomotives and shipping containers in brown, orange, and bright blue; Maersk, Chiang Ming, Hanjin, and Hapag-Llloyd emblazoned on the sides. Looking from the picture's vantage point, you would see my view this morning of nature and a pure white egret.
My focus during the bike ride can be a metaphor for life; something that psychologists call "framing." We all have ups and downs. For everything there is a time and purpose under heaven, as the Byrds sang, and God said eons before they made it into a Number 1 hit. The key to life, and in getting a good picture, is to choose your focus carefully. As a woman thinketh in her heart, so she is.
This morning, I could have focused on the industrial yuck of the tracks and the rusting containers with the ubiquitous white plastic shopping bag blowing along the tracks. Instead, I focused on the egret I inadvertently disturbed into flight rising into the blue sky, the Queen Anne's lace, the sun on my shoulders, and the view of Norfolk's skyline as I reached the marina.
