Staring out from a detoured train

Pastoral
Near Punkeydoodles Corners, ON
July 2019
This photo originally shared on Instagram

Early one morning last year, just before July slipped into August, I found myself on a train to the big city to the east. A derailment along the way had forced us to take the long way around, through countryside I had never before seen.

Grumbles were heard as we boarded the train. Late arrivals. Missed meetings. Rushed, incomplete days. Tense faces.

I tried to ignore the frustration around me as I settled into our now much longer journey. I stared out the window and idly watched some new scenery slide past us.

Somewhere between Shakespeare and New Hamburg, east of Stratford, not far from Punkeydoodles Corners (seriously), we came across this pastoral scene. It wasn't terribly different from everything else we had seen thus far, but it somehow triggered me to reach for my phone and rack off a few pictures.

Eventually, we all got where we needed to go, and the grumbling around me continued as we walked down the crowded platform in Toronto and eventually dispersed into the crowds that define Canada's biggest, busiest city. For months, this photo sat, gathering virtual dust in my digital archive while other, more notable scenes pushed their way to the front of my feed.

Yet here we are, after all this time, pondering the worth of an ordinary scene from an ordinary morning. And the only conclusion I can draw is that nothing is truly ordinary. Even challenged days like the one I experienced last summer are each extraordinary in their own way, each worthy of being captured, remembered, held onto.

I keep thinking there's a lesson in this scene, but I can't quite put my finger on it. Maybe I need to churn it a little more. Maybe I'll revisit it in a few months.

Or maybe I just have to keep listening to the little voice inside me that says "grab it now" when everyone else around me is too upset to bother looking up in the first place.

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