Staring at trees beside the Walmart parking lot

Nature all around us
Dryden, ON
September 2019
This photo originally shared on Instagram

You find memorable moments in places, and at times, where and when you least expect them.

Like here, at the edge of a Walmart parking lot. It’s 10:23 a.m. and I’m watching the clock closely as I work through my list of To Dos.

The day's schedule is packed. But something about the stand of trees beyond the pavement makes me stop and stare for a bit. Before long, I’m pulling my camera out of its bag and walking over.

Employees in the smoking area stare at me as if I’ve grown horns on my head, because I’m guessing they rarely see weirdos in cargo shorts and sandals wandering toward the forest to take a picture. I’m used to it.

I scan the area to ensure I don’t become someone’s hood ornament, then carefully compose a few frames before heading back to the car. The smokers are still out there. Still staring.

This is an admittedly derivative photo, like so many others I’ve shot over the years. But its worth extends beyond mere pixels, because it lets me remember a particular point in time, in a particular place, that otherwise would have been lost for good.

See, our son and his then-fiancee-now-wife were getting married later that day, and we were all running errands, each of us a part of a much larger puzzle. It’s a family thing, and I’m always trying to freeze moments like this.

So I’ve evolved something of a habit where I shoot pictures so I can look at them in future and be reminded what it felt like. The picture may be meh. The memory is anything but.

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