Yes, we have all heard the old adage that, "time waits for no man"; brilliant statement since time always moves forward, but I get the jest of its meaning. The problem with that also is that I don't always work at most efficient speeds and creating imagery tends to cause me to slow down even more.
The local weathermen had been advertising for nearly a week that the coldest weather of the past two years was about to invade north Texas on Saturday.The past week had already been a roller coaster of temperatures with one day in the 60s and one day in the 30s and so on and so on during the course of the week. But, Saturday was to be the cherry on the banana split, sprinkles on the ice cream, the marsh mellow floating in the hot cocoa. It was going to be in the upper 70s.
The thing about that was also the yippee dippie weatherman advertised a 52 degree drop in temperatures with an immediate shift in winds to the north as the cold front passed. No, it was not going to be one of those frontal passages and the next morning you feel a little chill. This one was going to strike and strike quickly. Within less than a couple of hours of the passage of the front. It did give cause to pause. Might want to think about this before you head out, I though. Take the jacket. Add the scarf. Run the errands before being creative with the camera. It was kind of fun to start to go into blizzard mode again (if you ever lived up north during a severe winter, you know that mode well).
It was amazing to see people in tank tops and shorts and sweating in mid December. Amazing because some of these would no doubt be surprised to be shivering before their chosen activity was over that day. People just do not listen or pay much attention to weather that is negative. They only listen and pay attention to weather that is favorable to their cause. In other words: people only half listen today (have you noticed all the white ear buds growing out of every ones ears?) Just look at one of them in direct eye contact and just move your lips. The face look you get as they pop one ear bud out of their ear is how cartoon animators got that "look" in some of the best cartoons of the 50s. Sure, ear buds were not even an ideal then, but there were ways to produce that same look of being highly annoyed. There it is---that word that I was looking for. Annoyed. Yes. That is it for sure.
When I am not looking for birds, or trees with that special look of fall, I am usually looking to see what the City Park workers are doing. They do a super job at keeping the lake in amazing shape on a daily basis. Sometimes, they have extended projects that can or cannot turn into something special. But, to ignore them or blow by them like there is a 5-alarm blaze somewhere else is a great disservice to them as individuals, their jobs that go unappreciated with every bottle cap or plastic bottle that I see floating and bobbing in the water, or the crews that keep the grass cut as the seasons progress and the prairie grasses turn golden or wildflowers come up and they mow around the wildflowers. That is not to mention the loss of all the tree limbs from age, disease, rot, storms, wind, or what may come next.
When the city takes down one of those magnificent trees, the stumps get painted red. There is a crew that comes along and drills out those massive stumps into sawdust mulch. Saturday, I had stopped and gotten out of the car to look at a recent drilling. It wasn't that long ago that I had shot that tree because it was one of those top 25 trees with character that grow at the lake. Now, I'm looking at the place where it had stood watch over the north shore of the lake for years older than I am at this writing. What that tree witnessed over the years would be an amazing time capsule of humans on earth, most likely.
Any who, I stopped to talk to a man that walks the lake daily with his dog and holds a like interest in those amazing trees that grow around the lake. In fact, there are more people that hold an interest in the trees there than those that cut themselves off from everything around them but some birds. Don't get me wrong here. I like birds. I'm just not obsessed with them so much as to get somewhat hostile when a family comes along with a bag a bread to feed those birds under the sign that says, "don't feed the birds" and then explains why you should not feed the birds. In a way, to me that is...it is... karma at its finest! I have to chuckle and turn away. Imagine a grown man or woman with a three-thousand dollar camera and glass foiled by a young family, kids and a couple of loaves of bread and sees that family as an invading army. Share the lake, people. Life is to short!
The lake walker and I walked together to one of the new trail benches overlooking the lake and sat down and talked for nearly an hour. I could not help but notice that the sky was filling in with clouds and I also had in mind the ETA of the cold front. Long story short, Us 'ole
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| The astonishing color |
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| The cold front nears and a 50-degree drop (after the fact) hit within two hours of this shot. |
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72 degrees at 12:53. At 23:53 it was 22-degrees.
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| The paved trail is to the left. The short cut path has long been here. |
tree hugger parted and went in opposite directions. There was still some time to get some great creations focused onto the mirror before the Polar Vortex struck. But, time waits for no man.
