Bring on the Rain

It could be argued that there are only two seasons in Oregon: the rainy season and summer. That's a bit of an overstatement, but as we enter into the rainy season it struck me that a bit more creativity will be needed in finding things to take pictures of. After all, while it may not be possible to ever get enough photos of Mt. Hood in all its summer splendor, the same can not be said for a wet sidewalk. I wonder if it wasn't something like a watery reflection that gave CS Lewis some inspiration for The Magician's Nephew (if I've got my Narnia trivia right, that is). There are all kinds of alternative realities out there, most of them just happen to last only as long as the puddle they're contained in. Sidewalks aren't the only place to find other universes staring back at you. A lot of the office buildings near where I work are rather space agey in their interior design (I swear the designer of a certain block of office buildings spent way too much time watching Star Trek Deep Space Nine), but the outside does a great job of reflecting the trees that dot the parking lot. Just think of the white stripe as the Star Trek touch. Sometimes it just depends on where you stand. At a workshop I went to a few weeks ago, the instructor talked about seeing the world as an ant, a dog, or a bird. She wasn't advocating running around in costumes as if caught in a Halloween time warp, but just to think about how those three creatures see the world. The shot above isn't exactly from an ant's point of view, more like a Chihuahua. Below is a Golden Retriever's view on the world.

The sky this time of year can do some great things for pictures. Sometimes the clouds roll across the sky and

the sun makes a surprise entrance only to retreat into the background, rather like someone who bursts into a room in the middle of a deep conversation and blushingly makes their way to the nearest exit. A few days ago, a fog crept into the morning sunrise. It took only about seven minutes for it to totally cover the trees beneath me as I waited for the sun to come up over Mt. Hood. There's something so beautiful yet mysterious about fog. Maybe it's all those Sherlock Holmes stories I read as a kid (Hound of the Baskerville's anyone?). This weekend I spent a wonderful morning outside in the rain. There's nothing to describe running when it's about 55 degrees out and the rain is gently falling. There are a number of wooded trails on this route and I love to stop in the middle of the forest while a mist moves along the path and the sound of the water overhead drips off the leaves. I'm sure this statement will come back to haunt me around January, but on days like that I really don't mind that it will be raining for another five or six months.