Serendipity and Surprise

7 May 2020

No talk here of health statistics or of politics this day.  Just a quiet musing on a serendipitous event and the surprising turn that occurred thereafter.

Last night I was going stir crazy. Pretty sure most of you have felt this at some point in the last 40+ days. I had done all the things I can do to address my desire to be busy that I could do at home.  I had pestered my son to make a video for me of his singing. Done.  Posted to Facebook.  Wanting something more I pestered my wife to take me for a ride on the backroads.  Done.  We were out for about ½ hour to 45 minutes.  

The drive was fun.  We saw a centennial farm (farm in same family for over 100 years).  We traveled down an old, but rarely used, road.  You can tell roads out here in the heartland are old when there is no shoulder and the trees on either side of the right of way are several feet around. We turned east when the road we were on T’ed and upon completing the turn saw a huge full moon rising.  We stopped the car and I grabbed a couple of shots of the majestic moonrise with my phone.

We puttered around for a bit but then we headed home.  When we got out of the car I decided to sit on my front stoop and see if the video of my son had gotten many likes.  Sitting there and starring at my phone I saw a big dog over on the sidewalk by my neighbor’s house.  When I saw a second big dog I decided to look up and see who was walking the hounds.  

Looking over I saw not dogs, but rather four deer on my neighbor’s city lawn. I quickly switched my phone from browsing to photo mode and grabbed a number of shots of the deer.  Then I sotto voce yelled for my wife, who was working on her computer in the house at the kitchen table (it sits in our bay window) to look up.  She was as surprised as I was.  She tried to grab a couple of shots of the critters but they moved on shortly after I brought them to her attention.

I air dropped a photo of the four deer to her after I cropped it and straightened the horizon.  She then posted it on What Do You See From Your  Window.  Window is a Facebook group where people who are under stay at home restrictions due to Coviid 19 are sharing what they see out their front window on any given day.  She posted the photo at about 8:30 pm last night.

As of 9 am today the photo has had 7,300 likes and 400+ comments.  The comments are from all around the world, Romania, South Africa, Belgium, and on and on.  The photo I took arose from a serendipitous moment. With everyone locked down I have heard wild animals are moving into more urban settings. I was in the right place with my phone camera under the right circumstances. That the photo garnered so much of a response is overwhelming.  7,300 hundred likes are 7,200 more likes that my most ever liked photograph before. I am stunned.

No politics or science today.  Just a tale about a snapshot.

I close as I always do with some music.  It is a pretty piece, and instrumental cover of a hymn we use in my Lutheran church.  The title is appropriate.