WW: Flower bed

(Yes, really. Monarch Sculpture Park, Thurston County, Washington.)

Appearing also on My Corner of the World.

Deep Thoughts

As the light changed from red to green to yellow and back to red again, I sat there thinking about life.

Was it nothing more than a bunch of honking and yelling?

Sometimes it seemed that way.

– Jack Handy


(Photo courtesy of 攝影師 and Wikimedia Commons.)

WW: Apple blossoms

Appearing also on My Corner of the World.

Chance Encounter

The late hour kept me running a brisk 50 mph (the maximum controllable speed on gravel), so that an apparent chunk of slate in the road nearly slipped beneath my radiator before it caught my attention. Grinding to a halt, I stared at the plate-sized rock in the rearview mirror. Sure enough, it sprouted two yellow-striped forearms and a matching head, with acid eyes that glared at me through the pall of dust I'd raised. I snatched my camera and jumped out, thinking to bag a quick photo, then chase my chelonian friend off the road before a less attentive traveller squashed him flat.

But on my advance he sprinted into the undergrowth, with scornful disregard for my species' reluctance to apply that verb to his. I was left to herd him with stomping boots, back into the fading sunlight, to get my portrait. He appreciated none of this - not the running over, not the dirt bath, not the brisk jog, and most particularly not the herding. When the slides came back from the lab, I found a study of one seriously bent Western painted turtle.

Still, I had to admire the guy's pluck. We were a hundred yards from water. Wherever he'd come from, wherever he was going, he'd earned his rest in that place.


(Adapted from Rough Around the Edges: A Journey Around Washington's Borderlands, copyright RK Henderson. Photo of Chrysemys picta bellii courtesy of Gary M. Stolz, the US Fish and Wildlife Service, and Wikimedia Commons.)

WW: Pondside meditation site

Appearing also on My Corner of the World.

Street Level Zen: Age

Don't write anything till you're 25.

Don't write for the high school yearbook; don't write for the college literary magazine.

Don't write that stuff.

You've never had any experiences. Just shut up.

I did not have anything to say until I was 35

and even then, not much.

– Joe Queenan

(Photo courtesy of Ilya Ilford and Unsplash.)

WW: Sesshin lunch

Appearing also on My Corner of the World.