Little Breezes

It is one of the first pictures I ever took with a digital camera, back in September of 2001.

The camera was nothing by today’s standards, just 1.3 megapixels and maybe a 2x zoom, but I fell in love with it almost immediately, partly because of the picture I took on a back road in Merritt Island.

I’m not even sure I saw the Great Blue Heron standing far in the background.  I know that even if I did see it, I didn’t know enough about birds then to even appreciate what I was seeing.

I was struck by the ancientness of the scene, by the way the path next to the canal seemed to go forever, by the green, by the deep greens, both in the growth on the water and in the overhanging trees.

I was captivated by the boat tie in front of me that looked much older than the houses in the surrounding neighborhood.

It was a scene untouched—left alone.

It was magical.

And I half-expected Anne of Green Gables to come sailing along in a boat at any time reciting Tennyson’s Lady of Shalott.

There was magic there—something crafting a spell that settled over me and hooked me right then.

There was magic in words, in stories—I had always known that but now I knew there was magic in pictures, in scenes, in breaths you took and breaths you held, in breezes and in the scratching, chattering laughter of leaves.

I became a photographer that day.