Day #46--Saturday Morning Catch on Tuesday

For the record, that elevator stands downtown Hospers, Iowa. On Saturday morning, I'd thought of wandering around somewhere an hour away or so, but now that we live in the country, radiant dawns are there for the viewing, this time of year right from our deck.

From the deck this one looked potentially glorious, but fleeting because a massive cloud bank was on its way east to smother what might be. But I couldn't help thinking that "what might be" was worth taking time so see, so I pulled on some shoes and a vest, grabbed my camera bag, and took off on gravel north and east, towards Sheldon, where, it seemed, the most open sky lingered. 

I was coming up on Hospers when I spotted this solitary pine tree in the cemetery west of town, the kind of silhouette I thought might just feature the good things already happening out east. I lined myself up with town, a half mile east, and caught that moment up top.

Here's the palette of sky that got me out of the house--a river of light and color, but I knew, if I was lucky, it could be a stunner--already was, for that matter. So I kept going, north, looking for something else to frame what was rapidly becoming a beauty of a dawn.

The color stayed vibrant, but the texture shifted into this rip-tide. Happened so suddenly I couldn't find a frame, but then sometimes the sky all by its lonesome is a memorable preacher. 

Switched lenses to get this--basically the same foreground but up close and more red and more variegated. The top is cropped because it was nothing but black; that cloud bank was coming, squeezing the color out of that vein of sun-lit brokenness. Wouldn't be long and the morning light would close up shop. But there was more for those clouds to squeeze, so I kept driving, looking for what else I could foreground.

Switched lenses again and got this. The sky is not wild, but I like this one lots. It's not gaudy or showy, just humble beauty.

I was driving right into this paint bucket of a dawn when I found a tree with some kind of prodigal limb and just enough old barn behind to conjure a story. But it's hard to know what to look at here because there's so much. 

Just before the quilt came in, I looked north. There's no foreground here, but the sky, King David, tells us, holds forth, like no other preacher. This one has no ornament, no character but sky. 

But that was about it. Finally the clouds smothered what there was of morning sun. I turned around and started home, from which I hadn't wandered all that far. I figured I'd drop by Casey's for a donut. 

The reds had slipped away, but I the clouds didn't cover everything, and what was there, out east, was golden for just a few minutes. My rearview wouldn't let me leave--still beautiful, same dawn, but now a gold field. That's when I remembered another pine, this one mangy but a delight, on another cemetery--Hospers has one east and another west of town. This eastern cemetery's pine is wonderful, a story in and of itself. I pulled over, turned around, and found this.

I don't know if it's the best picture--there's no accounting for taste--but something about this one is compelling, mysterious, nowhere near as colorful, but somehow far more of a story. I put some pics up on Facebook, and a friend, a preacher, said "This is a resurrection pic for sure--Good Friday has been upstaged." 

I like that. 

The clouds finally stretched themselves over the horizon east. I'd started and ended in a graveyard, but maybe the best shot captured something of a resurrection dawn. 

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BTW, soon there will be a book of shots from ten years of Saturday mornings. Made it myself.