Anniversary bliss

For an anniversary in 2017, I chose a place in northern Missouri, not far from the river. I wanted to get to Independence, where the Oregon Trail began. I found a little AirBandB in a place so impossible to find I had to call the woman three times to get there.

It was a little cottage on a swampy pond so full of fish that all I had to cast my bait upon the water. With the first cast, I pulled up a lug of a catfish so ugly it scared me. I didn't even pull it out. I quit. Didn't get a picture. 

It was a wonderful place for an anniversary celebration (said in jest btw). If there were an available bus, Barbara would have found it and bought a ticket home.

One early morning I found my way out to a reserve of some type and decided to see what I could see. There was an abundance of wildlife (of the insect variety) on plants in the kind of dappled sunlight that turns all the world a stage.

We're a world away from prairie landscapes, but where there's a bright dawn, there's usually something to shoot it.

 The "character" in this shot is that jagged bit of drama. The setting is plant leaves so wonderfully emerald that they virtually shine in the sun's wonderful light. My sense would be that cutting out that hunk of white at the very top would make the whole shot more perfect, but with my limited editing skills, any such attempt would put the insect's role far less "set," you might say.  Still, look at the almost fearful wickedness of that gash.

I'll just end with a cartoon.