We had a cold front move through earlier today and I could see it coming in yesterday evening when I was planning my day today. Rain was forecast as 100% in the morning and as expected I woke up to thick grey clouds.
I had resolved anyway to head for Circle B no matter what and it looked like I had about a two hour window after sunrise and before the rain came. So, gloomy or not, I grabbed the camera and headed off to one of the trails.
My expectations were absolutely minimal and with many of the creatures bedded down waiting for the front to pass over, the place seemed quite deserted.
The wind was keeping most of the birds out of the sky and the few that were there seemed to be quite subdued in what they were up to.
But here’s the thing … each of these guys brought color into the day just by being there and I appreciate every one of them. If they had all hidden away, I wouldn’t have held it against them so every little creature that I saw was a real bonus.
And boy were there some beautiful little bonuses there for me today. You can see here for yourself some of the guys that braved the grey day. My favorite shots are of the tricolor heron, the lone feather floating on the water, and the amazing little colored bunting.
I had never seen a bunting before and to find him at the very end of my trail was an unexpected splash of color in a genuinely grey day.
I hope you enjoy!
It was that little guy that really got me thinking on today’s topic. You see, it wasn’t that it was a bad day; it wasn’t. It wasn’t that I hadn’t got some nice pics already; I had.
It was that he arrived completely unexpectedly and that if some kind person hadn’t pointed him out to me, I might have totally passed by the bush he was hidden in.
We all have rainy days in our life. We all have sunny days in our life. We may go through periods of sustained rain or long periods of sunshine. But the truth is that much of our lives is played out in grey days.
These are days that are non-descript, uneventful, not bad and not good … just grey days.
For many of us, these days pass by without distinction and they can be a real source of life passing us by, if we let it.
You see, much like the bunting, there is almost always a splash of color that we can find in our grey day. It doesn’t have to be a day changer; turning a day on its head.
It just needs to be a moment that we can acknowledge where something is special. For example, you might spot a rainbow, or a little flower in bloom, or a butterfly flits by. These are scarcely moments in and of themselves, but we can stop and breathe them in nonetheless.
Because when we stop and acknowledge something even as “trivial” as the little flower, we absorb its color into our day. We make it a little less grey.
Not all such little moments will be as colorful as the little bunting but they all count.
Have you ever lain in bed at the end of a grey day and wrestled with finding anything of significance that made the day worthwhile? You might convince yourself that you are just tired and need to go to sleep but the truth is that if you have stopped to smell a single flower and dreamed along the fight of a gentle butterfly, then all of a sudden just that tiny part of your day become memorable.
We don’t remember grey days. They fade away into obscurity as soon as they are gone. If there are enough of them, they account for the main reason why people let life pass them by. Suddenly waking out of a sleep to realize that the years are slipping by at an alarming rate.
But the moment we inject a little color into one, we add a memory that slows down the passage of time and makes each day a more valuable part of our life experience.
While we don’t know how many days we get on this planet, a good rule of thumb is to make as many of them as memorable as possible. Even if for nothing else than a tiny splash of color we added into one that was otherwise fading into grey.
… just a thought.
