Notice Things

The current issue of Northern New England Journey (AAA) features a delightful piece entitled "Father Knows Best." In it, the author reminisces about leisurely Sunday drives she enjoyed as a kid in the mid-1950s with her folks and siblings. They'd meander about, sometimes to nearby towns, other times going further away. As a landscape photographer who has traversed all corners of my adopted state of New Hampshire, this passage about her dad at the wheel on these excursions made me chuckle:

He had a compass in his head and never got lost, although sometimes he didn't know precisely where he was. It was only New Hampshire. How lost could anyone really get?

As the family's Sunday drives took them past farms and villages and woods, to lakes, ice cream stands, and a beach on the Atlantic coast...she remembers her dad saying, "Just sit still. Notice things."

What sage advice. The world is full of beauty - of all sorts of marvelous, wonderful things - if we will just take the time to look. So often, though, we miss out. We don't see these things, even though they're sometimes right in front of us - because we're not really looking.

As the author's dad reminded her: "This world will amaze you if you pay attention."

A wise man, indeed!