A (Cautionary) Green Light

When I visited the orthopedic doctor last week, she gave me a cautionary green light to go on the planned photography workshop this week at the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. I will need to sit and rest a spell whenever I feel foot pain. I am taking the huge orthopedic boot but will not be wearing it when the workshop group is shooting. I will either wear a hiking boot on my broken foot or else a post-op shoe. (I use the post-op shoe for driving.) A cane and hiking stick will also be at my disposal. I may not take very many images, but I will learn, participate fully in the classroom portions of the training, and get some of my portfolio critiqued. Most of all, I will have fellowship with other participants. The workshop’s pro photographer is okay with my approach and says that he will take good care of me.

This is my first trip without the love of my life, Mr. Jim. It will be bittersweet, to embark on my own traveling adventures without him at my side. My heart is broken. My foot is broken. But my spirit is not.

I could ramble on about this, that, and the other regarding what’s been happening in my life lately. But I’m keeping this post somewhat short. Easter was spent alone and I ate leftovers. A few telephone calls helped to brighten the day. I expect future holidays to be dreadful affairs, but I have no choice but to soldier onward. A few friends and acquaintances have blessed me with some of their time, and I am grateful for those who have reached out.

Life remains more complicated and stunted with a broken right foot. I have to wear the huge orthopedic boot as much as possible for another three weeks, and will go back to the doctor then. Household chores are completed slowly or not at all. A few neighbors have stepped up and helped to walk Angel, much to her delight. Grocery shopping has proven to be my biggest struggle. I’ve managed to get that task accomplished twice and shouldn’t have to do it again for a while.

I still plan to go out to Wyoming for a landscape photography workshop in late May. The goal is for the metatarsal fracture to be healed by that time. However, I’ve already told the doctor that I will go on that trip no matter what. Trips planned in 2013 and 2014 were cancelled because of Jim’s illness. I have no intentions of cancelling this one. God is going to have to work it all out for me. He owes me big time, don’t you think?

I’m sorry that you had to endure the two dreadful cell phone pictures posted above. You need a respectable image to help make up for those eyesores. Hummingbird scouts have arrived in east Tennessee, and a filled feeder is already hanging on the front porch. So it is appropriate to dust off and share an image that I took last year of this beloved bird.

And that is why I do photography – to celebrate such beauty and capture a little whimsy, now and then, along the way.