Most people concentrate on the sky. But the shadows are just as beautiful. How satisfying it is to watch the light wrapping its shawl around trees and fence posts, barns and docks.
That's what I love about old Florida. The shadows tell a story, and it's not one of sadness. There are horse farms and still, muddy marshes supporting rotten boat bottoms with grasses growing through them. Soft hills carpeted with pasture display classic oaks like dancers on a pedestal.
North central Florida sprinkled woodlands across my weekend. They were laced with dogwoods--just past their prime and half-dressed with white flowers--a sight for the eyes a little too used to tropical scenes.
My mind has been too full of things. It's felt like French onion soup oozing over the edges of a mug that's too small. I've needed some serious nature, and nature that's more than 30 minutes from home. This part of the state feels like a more temperate zone--less beachy, with trees that actually lose their leaves in the winter, and therefore, shine zealous crops of lime green growth when the spring hits the air.
I feel renewed. Cedar Key sightseeing. Gainesville hiking. Ocala horseback riding. Strung together with two lane county roads, they have each seen their share of college students, visitors from out of state, families backed by generations born in a state where surprisingly few originate, and other characters of travel and home.
I regret my camera didn't make the treck, yet I see through a clearer heart lens of really being in the moment when I'm not concentrating on a perfect image to savor for later.
Shadows--whether building with the illumination of a new day or the fading of a day that's been filled with experience--lay themselves out on the land and reach to me. I feel their stories and the sun shining on them, an observer yet somehow part of it all.
