Last year’s Rainbow Lake trip was the most like accepting one of those phone solicited Marriott Rewards trips to a resort. Bright sun, warm weather and a pond surface so clear you could stand on your head and imagine the lake was the sky above. This year’s Misery Pond getaway was mixed with a day of wind that would have toppled our tent had we set it up exposed as the boys did two years ago.
Diane and Mary on our nature walk in WellFleet.
adam
Okay, even if I weren’t dashing about in frenzied, madcap overload, I still might have missed the broad-as-a-barn hint, and I certainly missed the inverted photograph at which was hinted. My only excuse is that I also missed the moment when the photo was taken — I remember stillness, but not THAT still! Sneaky Mikey …
michael
It looks less still right side up
Jennifer
Oh, wow, that’s really cool. I certainly missed the hint.
But I was rushing too — to a really important celebration of the publication of the new version of some software that I piloted 12 years ago and 2 years ago and one year ago … I got two other people to go miles and hours out of their way at rush hour in order to go to this event too … and it turns out it’s next week. At least I didn’t miss it.
Back to the photo — it reminds me of those photos of faces upside-down but with the eyes right side up: One doesn’t notice the wrong-way eyes. I look at the upside-down version here and just don’t see/can’t process the grey stuff above the surface of the water on the left. When I see it right-side up, clearly it’s a rocky outcropping on the right. When I see it up-side-down, it’s just weird … but not up-side-down!
michael
You do know that if I’d been one of those two people you’d be dead now? But from this distance your tale is quite funny.
I agree with that processing problem.
Jennifer
Neither of them wanted to end up behind bars, and the security guard at the very-quiet-business in Porter Square would have figured it out.
Great color ink-blot test. Did you have any such plans for it when you took it? (Are all these from the same single photo?)
michael
Yes, most are from the same point.
We have lots of ink blots from years past canoeing on the Moose River. They work best when the sky is the same color as the water, as it often was-a dismal washed-out grey. And in those days we paddled later in October when the trees looked like dead sticks having shaken off their burden of leaves which lay on the ground like large flakes of psoriatic skin. Year after year we’d return to what felt like the inside of a wet and windy coffin because we were so enamored with five days of seeing only our reflections. Turns out that by leaving two weeks earlier, we get the same peopleless landscape but with the feeling that we’ve fallen into a bowl of Kix.
Jennifer, how about a short story?
rakkity
Mike’s still photos seem to be generating as much comment as most of the movies ever did. I was completely taken in by the “still” lake, but now when I look at the upside-down shot, my hindbrain gets a little uneasy. Those cliffs on the left side just don’t process.
Jen
I love this… The upside down version, including rocks, is now my desktop picture. So cool.
rakkity
Saved it to a flash drive to show to the Mrs & KT tonight.
michael
But what happens when Newton’s Second Law kicks in and those boulders tumble down onto your keyboard?
My apologies, Jennifer. My hindbrain must have taken over last night. In my yoot a mistake like that would have been a source of fun and exploration.
Jennifer
Your “yoot”? Guess you’re getting old; can’t even spell “yurt”. But wait, you don’t live in a yurt.