Even a Blind Squirrel Finds an Acorn

I went stomping through the countryside Saturday evening taking photos. I was looking for an interesting shot to submit to a local photo contest and thought I might capture something interesting along the back roads near my home. Even though I live in a subdivision, I live in a rural part of the county, and I am surrounded by fields, streams and assorted wildlife. In fact, a wildlife refuge is about ninety seconds from my driveway by car. That was the first place I headed, with Hubby’s warning to be careful bouncing off my ears. I found a couple of decent beauty shots, but nothing grand. By the way, this kind of scene can be found regularly in this neck of the woods. I wanted something more interesting, so I drove down a two lane highway toward a little spot in the road that is more of a slightly congested area than a town. In fact, congested is an exaggeration. The busiest spot is the convenience store where you can buy a Coca Cola and a ring bologna sandwich made just the way you want it. They were closed. Otherwise, I would have snapped a few pictures at the meat counter for you. There was nothing going on around there. Not even a lazy dog lounging on a porch. So I turned back and headed down the road again, looking for a white cross I’d seen along the road earlier. It had potential for some interesting pictures, but I drove past it twice before I finally found a place I could park the car. It was about a quarter of a mile from the cross, so I started hoofing it, trying to be quick because the traffic was fast and kind of heavy for a country highway. The cross also sits near a shady biker hangout. And when I say biker hangout, I don’t mean the Harley riding, fun loving loud kind of biker who is misunderstood. I mean the racist, drug dealing kind of biker who hangs Confederate flags in the windows to hide a stash of meth and weapons. Hula didn’t want to run into any of those folks.

I highly underestimated the depth of the ditch by the cross and ending up jumping into it to get close enough for photos, praying the whole time that chiggers did not invade the legs of my shorts and that a big black snake did not slither across my feet. I snapped and snapped but just couldn’t get the kind of shot I was looking for. I finally gave up on it, but I had highly underestimated how hard it would be to get out of that ditch and had to grab onto some vegetation to crawl out, hoping that a big black snake did not slither under my chest. I headed back toward the car, disappointed because at this point I had been driving around shooting pictures for more than an hour and had turned up nothing. Two cars came zipping down the road from opposite directions and since there were no shoulders on this road I had no choice but to jump in a ditch, again hoping that a big black snake did not slither along my feet. I was up to my waist in weeds and already itching, but as I sighed and grumbled I looked up and found this:Hello God. Right in front of me was the prettiest sunset I’d seen in a long time. And I started snapping because the colors in a sunset change so fast.And while it may not win any contests, I sure got a nice prize for stumbling around in the weeds for an hour and a half.