Renewal - Cliched

Life comes in spits and spurts, ebbing and flowing, rising and setting....etc. We believe we are permanent somehow, even though we watch everything around us go through the stages of life - birth, existence and finally death. Here's another cliche: life is just too bloody short. And it's true. We pine away, or fret our days into sleepless nights and then do it all over again in the morning. I sit here, drinking Sapporo beer while listening to Sheryl Crow and think about my father, who passed away earlier this year. He would have been 90 in March. We had talked about his birthday a lot last year - his grandfather and aunt had made it past the 100 mark with relative ease. 'Longevity runs in the family, you know.' I remember feeling a sense of awe and abject terror when my father brought it up at the dining room table when I was a child. Nothing was tabu when my father was holding court at supper. He was a very precise man - nearly 33 years in the Canadian military had been a field in which he had flourished, though I'm not sure who had the biggest impact on whom.

But anyway, we sibs had sat with glee as we listened to his planning and preparation. Yes, we'd come from our distant provinces and spend his 90th birthday with him in Red Deer. And then on January 18 my brother-in-law phoned to tell me that my father had passed away unexpectedly in the wee small hours between 4 and 6 am. I flew out immediately. I firmly expected him to outlive me and here he was, after months of planning, not even attending his own birthday!

I took this sunset photo on Friday night. I had set up my tripod and camera anticipating the arrival of harbour seals. They'd been popping up in the Comox harbour frequently over a two week period. The lighting was perfect, the settings had been rechecked twice, and I'd made sure extra batteries and SD cards were nearby and easily accessible. It was a lovely day and the horizon was dotted precisely with white sailboats and sewn up by the comings and goings of small speed boats. But where were the seals? I spotted a lovely Belted Kingfisher by the harbour lights off the breakwater. Now that was a bird on a mission!

Out of the corner of my eye I spied movement near the waterline. Lo and behold, a Great Blue Heron swished into view. I was about 20 minutes into my shoot when a sailboat decided to come into dock, right past me. It spooked the heron, of course, but he flew only as far as the nearby pontoon. I adjusted my seat and tripod and continued to wait for the perfect shots. And then a yacht, a very LARGE yacht, began wending its way towards MY end of the dock. The noise of this ship jockeying for position was deafening, though the heron stood perfectly still. He was probably shocked right down to his pearly ribbled gnarly toes. I cursed under my breath as the crew urged the captain to get closer to MY heron. My heron had been put out once again and off he flew...back to his original position near the lights at the breakwater. That's when I turned to gaze spitefully at the crew with mayhem on my mind and was gobsmacked as the vision of sunset glistening off the railing of a very LARGE yacht. I must admit the yacht looked quite fetching in that light.

I was ecstatic. I set up my small portable chair, adjusted my tripod and set to capoturing the images