Evening Walk at the "Trails Near Our House" AKA the "Trails by the Apartments" on June 16, 2020

December 30, 2020

Evening Walk at the "Trails Near Our House" AKA the "Trails by the Apartments" on June 16, 2020

The boys, Toby, and I got to take a walk one evening on these new trails of 2020 and the sunset and light could not have been more spectacular. I could not stop trying to capture it. The boys get annoyed with the constant stopping at times, which I understand because I used to be the same. They will learn to appreciate it in time, as I have, I think. Life moves so fast. We have to stop and sometimes make ourselves notice and take in the things that matter. Some call this "mindfulness." It has a place. Sometimes it comes naturally; sometimes we have to force it and need to and should force it. Like a child tugging on their parent's shirttail to get their attention, do that to yourself to make you see what's before you before it's too late. I'm happy to say on this evening, I was able to easily get into the moment and appreciate the beauty of summer.

And, that's another change in me. I used to dislike much about summer. It's very long, hot, and dry in Texas. It's quite redundant, even. But I've come to appreciate it in its own right. Rather than just grin and bear it while I wished for fall to come, I try to take it in as well. I was telling Toby the other night that I found the heat during the day much more bearable and less irritating once we started running in the summer. Now, we go very late at night when it's "cooler" but that's a very relative term in Texas. It might be 90 rather than 105, but the sun is down and it's not as hard on your lungs (we have bad air here at times) and your stamina is better. At least that's all true for me.

On this night, we did not run (we are rather inconsistent in our efforts, but hope springs eternal), but we walked and just took it in. Here is what I caught. Toby's pics from that evening are here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

This next set is of the same clump of Firewheels as the sun was setting. I kept shooting basically the same shot to experiment with the effect of the light on them. The differences are subtle from one picture to the next, but sometimes that subtle difference makes a big difference, I'm finding. I might have moved the camera a bit to one side or the other or lower and the sun was, of course, in constant motion downward. See what you think. I told Toby it's the most artsy thing I've done with photography thus far.