Day Thirtyeight: Wellsley Island Porcupine

You get up in the morning and you never know what is in store for you. Yesterday I started out with a mission to find a guitar playing gig. It ended with this photo of a porcupine! I've never seen one live before, just dead ones on the road.
Did I find a gig? Yes I did. But still not what I am looking for. I'm guessing I spent a total of two hours on the phone. But they were productive. The end result is that I am probably going to play guitar for at three different functions for the Jefferson County Historical Society. The events are not firmed up yet, but I anticipate they will be. I have one date set up for the farmers market in Watertown, June 30th. I got hold of the restaurant manager at Bonnie Castle Resort in Alexandria Bay. I had a positive chat with her, but nothing solid yet. I called a few other places with similar results, or left messages for the key people. I need to call two of them back this morning. In the end I probably made eight calls.

I also was called by two other people unrelated to my mission. One was my brother, another was a friend from the past who seemed to be in need of conversation. I can't go into all of that-not enough time. Those calls however, tended to prolong my mission. All in all, I'd say I made some progress trying to promote the music side of my life.



Now, back to the porcupine. As I mentioned, my brother called. He wanted to take a drive to Wellsley Island to check out some land for sale. It was a pretty nice day so we set it up for when I got done with my mission. We looked at the land and discovered that it was owned by a man whom we grew up with as kids. Small world. Now, one cannot go to Wellsley Island without driving around and checking out the scenery, the architecture and the like. Thus it was, while cruising, we spotted this porcupine in a tree. Couldn't pass up a photo of that.
I should point out that there are many reasons why I photograph things. Not all of them provide great, artsy photos, or spectacular nature photos. This porcupine photo is rather mundane as nature photos go. The light was terrible, the creature is dark, shooting him overhead against the sky, through tree branches, couldn't be a worse scenario. (Because of that I used a flash on the camera.) Being that I have never seen a live porcupine before I wanted to take it's picture just to be able to show it to family and friends. That's the reason for taking many photos. To document and share your experiences. How would it be if I didn't have a camera with me? I would tell people about seeing it. I would also have been standing there looking at it sayin, "My God, I wish I had a camera!" I have heard that story hundreds of times. "I wish I had a camera with me." My big fear in life is that I'll absent mindedly leave the house with out a camera and run into Elvis pushing John Kennedy in a wheel chair toward a waiting flying saucer! Without a camera, you could tell everyone what you witnessed and they would never believe you. Another thing, if you ever did get photos of Elvis, Kennedy and a UFO you could sell them for a lot of money to the National Enquirer!


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All photos and text contained in this blog are copyright Gary Walts 2010