Little wonders

As a camera-person, I watch the world with a photographer's eye, but I don't always have a camera with me. This means that so many pictures never materialize, except in my memory. My magical day yesterday was a day of animal wonders. I never expected that, having driven my mother to the airport, I would see on the return to the city a whole herd of dear grazing among the trees near the highway. The meadow with the mist-covered mountains behind seemed transformed by the presence of these beautiful, peaceful creatures, making a picture I can never show but only tell of. Later that day, I had to go take care of an errand in one of those suburban office parks with man-made lakes and benches for the workers to commune with grass and trees during a break. As I always do in a place like that, I parked my car facing the little lake. When I came out from the building an hour later, a large grey Canadian goose was contentedly sitting in front of my car, close to a pile of pine cones I had not noticed before that looked like a pile of treasure, tempting me to imagine the goose collecting them, as surely he might have done in a story I haven't read yet.