When You Don't Have a Camera

There's got to be a corollary to Murphy's Law that says the best pictures appear when there's no camera along with which to record them. That happened to me three times yesterday.

The first was just after I hit the road, when the sun was up at just that perfect morning angle that highlights the warm colors. My drive takes me past a small lake with a farm on the other side. The barn has recently received a new coat of red paint, the trees are turning color, the lake surface was completely still, and the scene and its reflection were spectacular. I thought about heading over this morning for a re-creation, but while the sky is sunny, there's a breeze.

The second was when I got a run down to Shakopee. For those not paying attention to such local details, that heavy rain that hit southern Minnesota last week is currently heading up along the Minnesota River Valley, causing record fall flooding. (Oh yes, I just heard from my niece in Truman. They lucked out with just a little flooding in their basement.) Anyway, the specific bit of flooding that caught my eye was at Valley Fair, an amusement park located on the flood plain next to Shakopee. Hwy. 101 goes right past it, giving me a great view, and mostly the park was high and dry. But the end, down in the southwest corner, was flooded. I carry the image in my mind of the old wooden rollercoaster standing in dirty water, a study in browns, with one part of the track actually submerged at its lowest spot. Luckily it's October, so the fall weekends when it's expected to be open for business are past.

The last was, fittingly, at the very end of the day. Clouds had moved in with a cold front, and there were spotty showers through the afternoon. There was for the moment some clearing from the west, so as the sun hit the horizon, it lit up the clouds from below. This day the color of choice was an intense coral. It not only lit the ragged bottoms of eastern clouds, but the western sky positively glowed, so bright and intense that the clouds could have been reflecting an enormous fire, or been on fire themselves. It wasn't until the sun sank that one could tell that there were layers of clouds, with their edges selectively outlined, and not one enormous ball of color. I was driving north at the time, sneaking all the peeks it was safe to do over my shoulder while driving at freeway speeds until the show was over.