Saguaro Wanderings: Seeing 2011 (#128)

For your consideration: a calming, hopeful end to a turbulent week fraught with shifting currents and uncertain outcomes.

Returning to work after a full month absence imposed immediate pressure to not simply catch up, but indeed to grapple with a myriad of newly loose threads and looming deadlines with now critically compressed time-frames. Mix in an equal measure of messy, difficult tribulations and the mental atmosphere took on tones caustic and dim.

In much need of a brief, known refuge I grabbed camera, lens, tripod and hunkered down behind the viewfinder, seeking indeterminate destinations. Lo, (lacking much capacity of original thinking at the time) my landing became a well-trod venue . . . albeit resplendent with unusual architecture, considerable statuary, and wonderfully tended landscaping.

The great irony here is that I arrived fully 45 minutes beyond what I saw as desirable lighting — the Sun had sank below the city's tree-line horizon, casting most of my potentially interesting subjects in muddled and gray-blue lighting unsuited to my style — yet moments later the sky (seemingly suddenly) took on hues and vibrancy I rarely see beyond the borders of my Arizona deserts. Thus, dear reader, I was presented (and pass on to you) an exquisitely surprising tableau positively awash in optimistic, soothing peace and noble, even regal confidence that heavy darkness always has uplifting illumination light as its defining companion.