upon choosing not to miss the chance

     I was on the way home from school a couple of days back when I saw it.  Only a mile from home along Locust Road and just outside of the city limits of Montrose, I glanced to the north and saw that the adobes down the way were lit up.  Their normal color now seemed a brilliant and shimmering white as the late afternoon sun broke through the heavy cover of dark gray storm clouds.  It caught my attention in such a way that I thought, "Wow, I'd love to get a picture of that!"  As I made my way down the very short distance it would take to snap a photo, I realized that I was already too late.  In less than a minute, the view was already gone and no image would be taken.  You have to be quick around here to get photos like that.

     I headed home to find Mike and Sally the dog already back from their after work walk, a daily ritual for those two each and every day.  I started unpacking stuff from my day at school and was trying to decide what chore to do first around the house when I noticed the strange cloud patterns forming over the mountains.  I've probably taken about 999 photos of the beautiful San Juan Mountains, just to the south of us here in Montrose but what the heck?  Why not one more?  So out I went, camera in hand.

     But the picture of the mountains that late afternoon was not the one that I noticed the most.  The photo that caught my attention came to me in our own front yard and as I gazed towards the east and the majestic Black Canyon, there it came and it is the photo shown below.

The view from our own front yard, with the Black Canyon of the Gunnison looming in the background to the east.  All around us that late afternoon, in all directions, the skies were black and cloudy announcing the inevitability of the storm that was fast approaching.  At just the right moment in time, the sun broke through the gloomy skies and cast the most eerily beautiful light over everything around the farm yard.  It lasted so very briefly and I was glad to capture the view with several clicks of the camera's shutter.

     I sat looking at these photos later on that evening and still was amazed by the way they had turned out.  We have lots of great views around here on any normally given day.  Out the kitchen window, the San Juans stand straight and tall, towering well over 14,000 feet.  To the east looking towards the state of Utah, the Uncompahgre Range positions itself at over 14,000 feet of elevation as well.  The Grand Mesa, well ever since I moved here last year it's been facing the north and although it's a little bit shorter than the others (but not by much) it is equally beautiful.  My favorite view is the one to the east as I look at the canyon land that always guides me back home when I want to return to Kansas to visit everyone there.  It's the view shown in the snapshots above and as it turned out that evening a couple of days back, it created the most beautiful photos.

 

     You know I nearly missed seeing the sight that would create such a picture.  If I would have taken the five minutes to have changed out of my school clothes into my normal attire of sweats and my beloved Haven High School alumni sweatshirt, it might have been too late.  If I would have grabbed my camera but realized that the batteries were dead or the camera card was nowhere to be found, I'd have been up that proverbial creek without a paddle.   (already been there, it's not that much fun)  A thousand things might have stopped me at that moment, but they did not.  It gave me a lot of pause to slow down, stop, and think. 

 

     Friends, I have a question for you.  Just a show of hands here and no one will know but you and I what your response was.  Have you ever missed seeing opportunities or blessings that were right before your eyes, simply because you were too busy or too worried or too preoccupied with life?  Hold them high because I'm counting.....  Yep, just as I thought.  I'm not alone here because if you would have been the one counting up the tallies you would have seen my hand raised high as well.  I am most positive that I have forfeited  lots of things that could have been mine to enjoy, however briefly, because I was just way too busy worrying about things that I had no control over in the first place.  I've taken for granted a whole lot of blessings that were my "gifts" simply because they always seemed to be there anyways.  When they disappear or are no longer right at hand for me to see, the sobering realization always seems to set in.  Life has a way of being like that and all of us in our nature of being human are guilty of it.  And as for me, I'm at the top of that guilty list many times over.

 

     It's Sunday and already the second day of March.  I wonder what is ahead for me and for you this day.  Whatever it may be, the good or  the "not so much", I'm way more determined to find out than I would ever be afraid.  For you all, my dear friends and family, I would always wish the same.

 

 



Making my "peace" with the pass at Monarch in October of 2013.  More determined to see my classmates from the "land of long ago and far, far away" than I would have been afraid to go back to Ks. in the winter.

Taking a picture with my dear friends Darin and Kodi back in 2011 when both Darin and I were members of the "broken arm" club together.  I was way more determined to get poor "old lefty" healed again than I would ever have been afraid to go through the surgeries necessary to make things right.  Geesch, what kind of idiot would have attempted to jump a curb on a bike?  Oh yeah, that'd be me.

May 21st, 2013~the day the road got a whole lot shorter. Sometimes when the opportunity, when the blessing arrives it takes a leap of faith to go through with it.  God has blessed me always~