Keep looking in the margins

The other night, I found myself in the parking lot of the TV station I call home. I had just finished my Sunday night tech segment and was on my way home. It had snowed earlier (see here) and the plows had thankfully already been here.

I often pause before I get into my car - or any vehicle, for that matter. I use these little slivers of time to think about where I am, where I'm headed, and why I'm out here in the first place. I close my eyes and wish for a safe journey. I try to freeze the moment in my mind. Because, you know, you just never know.

And as I paused on this clear, cold, snowy night, my eyes were drawn to the edges of the parking lot where the now-departed plows had left their piles of snow. I walked over to them and stared intently at the rugged surfaces. The looked like moonscapes, something a NASA probe might have beamed back. The otherworldly scene almost begged to be recorded in some way because a) it was otherworldly and b) it was destined to hang around only as long as fickle Canadian weather allowed.

As I tried to compose the most abstract-looking perspectives while simultaneously willing my exposed fingers to not freeze and/or drop my smartphone, I thought about the seeming ridiculousness of a spontaneous photo shoot in the furthest streetlit corner of an empty parking lot.

This was as close to the margins as I had been in a while, and the mere thought of it made me smile. Because that's where you see the stuff you might have otherwise missed. And where you learn why we all need to put life on hold every once in a while and poke around its edges for a bit. At the very least, you end up with pictures and stories to bring home.

I hope you'll try it, too.