Just a Passing Glimpse among Maddened Dinosaurs on a Highway: Thoughts on the Value of Place

Three versions of the same place, photographed.

As I drive--especially since I drive all day for a living--I get short-lived moods that carry thoughts, these not processes of "getting to thinking" about something, because the business pace is fast and routinized, but connections having a spatial quality help me remember. They happen quick as I move on.

For a couple of minutes I was all over the state about ponds and lakes, and fascinated with how we sometimes have deep desires related to bodies of water we know, or want to know. It also occurred to me it's important to write about these moods because if we never were to read, write, or talk about appreciations that matter deeply, the likes would be forgotten. 

Even the ponds at Colonial Park in Franklin Township beckon to me, despite their sort of homogenized feel with short-cut grass surrounding, although a far shoreline features brush in the water, and trails skirt much of this largest pond with wooded space. I've known about the two ponds for many years. We took my son to play miniature golf at Halloween time from an early age. Just this past February we saw "Putnam County Spelling Bee" performed in Franklin Township, and as we drove past Colonial Park, I mentioned the ponds to my son, that we've never fished them. Then I came upon Catfish on the Lake, Mark Modoski's blog. Nice bass! From one of the Colonial Park ponds.

I probably won't get over there until this summer. Round Valley Reservoir now lures me. By June or so it's all over there. I'll go fish Colonial Park some 95-degree early afternoon.

Places exist all over. This planet truly is a Paradise we're usually exiled from. If we give up on our appreciations for what a lake, reservoir, pond, river, rill (I know one in Morris County about two feet wide I like) means to us personally, just each of us alone, although it is possible to communicate about to some degree, what's the glory of life anymore?

Just a passing glimpse among maddened dinosaurs on a highway.