Happy Accidents
A moment of serendipity…
I sent Leon some photos from our run on the Appalachian Trail this past weekend1, including this one:
I thought it was a nice shot, a good representation of the terrain we were on for a lot of the journey, and I liked the way he was looking up into the treetops.
His response, moments later, told me there was more to it:
“Whoa… did you intentionally capture that pileated call on that one “live” pic? If not, that is one happy accident.”
Happy accident indeed.
I didn’t even know “live” iPhone photos included audio. And if I’d known, the odds are still long that I’d have had my camera out at just the right moment to capture that distinctive bird call while navigating those rocks without falling.
But sure enough, there it is, and what I thought was just a decent snapshot turns out to be a fairly magical artifact that captures the spirit our adventure.
Finding that bit of buried treasure reminded me of another photographic gem that might easily have slipped by me. This one wasn’t hidden within a file format I wasn’t properly familiar with. It was on a forgotten role of undeveloped film in the back of a desk drawer.
I almost threw it away.
Something stopped me, though, made me track down a place that still develops black and white film. Good call… the photos were from a day twelve years earlier, from an outing with my two-and-a-half year-old son in the fall of 1999.
It was pure gold I didn’t know I had, a treasure I’d almost discarded.
In a world full of treasures, much slips by us, unnoticed. We’re distracted, or we settle into narrow patterns of focus that show us only what we think we’re looking for. We charge forward without glancing left and right. We look without seeing, we listen without hearing.
But if we can manage to pay attention, if we open ourselves even slightly to the possibility of surprise in the hidden eddies and the broader currents, I promise we’ll find some of the treasures, and some of them will find us.
By happy accident.
Our adventure: we ran south on the Appalachian Trail from the Pennsylvania/Maryland border to the West Virginia/Virginia border south of Harper’s Ferry, spent a day exploring down there, then ran back to PA the next day (40+ miles each way). I’m hoping to put together a proper report on the adventure soon.