While I'm frustrated that I got an unintentional ad placement in this photo, this shot was, otherwise, a very happy accident. I was a passenger riding out to an evening event, when I looked to the west and saw this spectacle of the sky. It wasn't until after I took the shot that I looked back and saw the very ironic and amusing signage that accompanied it.

Have you ever had an experience so crazy, so insane- even perhaps a little life-threatening, that you couldn't help but look back on it very fondly? This probably ranks among the highest of those times for me. It's one thing to hike out into the very, very remote backwoods without a trail and only a GPS guiding you along a very rough route. It's another to find yourself at dusk without a source of water after a long and very exhausting hike. We had, by great miracle, found a spring just after dark that night down this hill you see here, and hiked back up and made camp. When it came morning, storms were coming and going, and the three of us, tired but quite adventurous, made this small tent our sanctuary until it passed long enough to break down camp and carry on. It would only be short minutes later that the storms would resume overhead, also bringing on heavy hail and even thunder and lightning- which is no small thing when you're on top of a mountain ridge wearing a steel-frame backpack with trekking poles. All said and done, it was an adventure to remember!

I find it no happenstance that when I took this photo, I was throwing small pebbles into a nearby stream bank with my young niece. She is a bright and wonderful child, and always glows with a certain radiance, even in spite of difficult circumstances in her life from the moment she was born. And both the good and the bad, like the ripples in this pond, echo and reverberate throughout her life, and through all of ours. It takes so little to set into motion things that make us who we are.

I took this photo in a large sculpture garden, in this section which was representative of addiction, sin, and everything else hell affords. From the other side of these walls, you see many who are laughing, having the time of their lives- and some even laughing everyone who isn't on that side of the wall to scorn. But as you make your way around the walls, you see a different picture: misery; despair; pain; chains; and occasionally pure evil reflected in stony eyes. It was this one statue that drew my attention though: a single individual, hidden away in a dark corner by themselves, with a look that words really can't even describe. In fact, there's not even a facial expression to decipher- you learn and understand everything just by way they are poised- and yet it speaks all the more deeply. As one who knows the pains of addiction and vice, I can see myself, in a way. I suppose everyone, in one way or another, knows the feeling this statue emanates. As I looked up on this scene, two poems came to my mind, which convey two very different scenes:

When the noise stops
And the lights fade,
The party has ended
And so has the charade.

But when the noise stops,
And so ends the cheers,
It is then, at last,
When my mind becomes more clear.

Have you ever, in the middle of life's busy days, just taken a moment to sit outside and enjoy the evening air? It's a lovely little life joy I hope and wish everyone would get to experience.