Aspirations

Whenever I travel, I keep my eyes open--not just because I don't want to run into something on the road, but because I invariably run across whimsical things. On my recent trip to Missouri, I found these three scenes so close together that it only took one back-tracking on a side road to capture them all.

What caught my attention first was this old red barn. It's difficult to see in the picture, but there's a tree growing inside the door--a large tree, not a recent sapling. I noticed as I whizzed by on the four lane highway, but, fortunately, there was a feeder road running alongside so I was able to turn onto it and backtrack to capture the shot.

Since I was now stopped at the side of the road, I was able to fully appreciate the scene on my left, clouds chasing a windmill in the morning.

Further on I passed this silo with a tree growing up through it--what is it about Missouri trees? Western Oklahoma trees would only have grown knee-high and settled contentedly into the darkness, happy with the slit of morning light and the one golden circle at high noon. . It makes me wonder what I have missed seeing in my life, just by being in too big a hurry to pull off onto a side road and look around. I also wonder how many times I settled for the small sunshine instead of climbing up into all-surrounding light.