Spent a little while this morning wandering the boardwalk over at Lettuce Lake.
It is a gorgeous day here and as I hadn’t been there in a while, it felt like a perfect day for a visit.
There was a conscious choice in my decision to go there … did I want to see creatures (if so, then Circle B was where I needed to go) or did I want scenery and I chose the latter.
Lettuce Lake is on the Hillsborough River just north of Tampa and it has a wonderful boardwalk that runs right along the water’s edge. It opens up every so often and gives the senses a lovely view of this very natural setting.
While I had the zoom lens with me, my choice with a primary interest in view, was a wide angle that could capture as much in one shot as possible.
At one stage, I took this panoramic, as even the wide angle couldn’t correctly capture the breathtaking scenery around me. Zoom in on it if you can. It was very captivating.
As I wandered the length of the boardwalk, my eyes weren’t looking for the normal feathered friends or alligators. They were looking beyond the immediate and more into the distant.
It made for a very serene visit and you can probably tell as much from the selection of images at the end of this blog. Other than a tell-tale surface bubble that resembled a flying saucer, life took second stage to the peaceful beauty of the place that I was in.
Hope you like these!
Anyway, it would have been difficult to be more mellow, as the fresh air and warm sunshine helped to create a paradise-like environment for such a quiet and gentle setting.
I was only a level or two above sleep state, as my feet kept moving me forward without purpose. My soul just saturated in the beauty and peace around me, brought to mind that Seinfeld episode where the Jerry Stiller character preached “Serenity Now” as his way of dealing with all the stresses around him.
I identified entirely with this mantra as the turbulent week just faded in a quiet murmur in the back of my mind and peace flowed freely throughout me.
It was seriously wonderful.
As I drove away home, it gave me thought as to why I don’t choose serenity more often. Why don’t all of us?
I think in most cases life has us conditioned into a rat race condition, and we feverishly chase around from goal to goal, issue to issue, and moment to moment.
We operate as if we have to accelerate through life to some level of grading system at the end. An A+ or gold star being awarded if we can fit 110% of stuff into our lives before we fall over and die.
On the sidelines we continually get drilled on achievement and accomplishment by a world that places demands on us regardless of the price we end up paying.
Some of us espouse that same chaos and stress into the lives of those around us, demanding that every waking moment be accounted for, with success as the only acceptable goal.
But to live life in that manner is to ignore the opportunity around us that allows us to savor these living moments rather than just acknowledge them.
I try hard to live on the one-life-to-live principle and the key word on that phrase is actually the “live”, not the “one”. Because to live the moment is to take what joy and peace we can from it, not just to get through it.
Some of my Dad’s and Mom’s ashes are in Lettuce Lake. It was a special place to them, through a direct visit and then living it vicariously through my lens in their final years.
Their journey through Lettuce Lake was always at a pace where they could breathe in the wonder and not just getting to the other end of the boardwalk.
And this morning, my walk was slow and deliberately so. Just breathing and soaking and occasionally pushing a shutter button on the camera so I could share some of it with you.
It isn’t a method with which you can live a whole life, as many of the issues and demands we face require serious and concerted attention.
But it is a method that we can use occasionally use that allows us to get away from the craziness and step into a world where “serenity now” is more than a mantra. Where it is an escape hatch for our souls.
… just a thought.
