The Advantage of Walking

It’s amazing how things can look from a different perspective! Just the other week, I submitted a post about a creek that I discovered in my very own neighbourhood while out on a photographic excursion during an ice storm. While on another photographic excursion, I came across another scene that I had not noticed before… It was this railway track. Now, I knew it was here and I knew where it was going but I had no idea how beautiful it looked from this angle.

I took this photograph from a bridge…a bridge I had travelled across by car thousands of times before but had never walked across in order to view what lay on the other side. The road that you see run directly across the tracks is a road that I have also driven across thousands of times before but never took the time to look left or right for any length of time to see where the tracks came from or went to. There are also a number of tunnels that go under the track that I have driven under to get from Point “A” to Point “B” on many occasions and so, I would never have been able to see the tracks from that vantage point. I had often stood on the train station platform that you can barely see at the end of the tracks and expectantly looked down for an incoming train but never focused on the track’s surroundings. The point being is this, I knew the track well, I have seen many a train travel down it but I had never really observed one from this bridge where this photograph was taken from.

This photograph was taken while I was photographing some iced over nature. I had been out in the frigid weather for some while and due to numb fingers, I decided to call it day and head back to my car. On the way across the bridge, I couldn’t help but notice this train slowly moving away from me down the track. Not really wanting to but figuring that it was a good photo opportunity, I crouched down and snapped a few shots and made my way back to the car without giving it a second thought… until I saw the photo on my computer screen.

I was in awe. I was in awe of how beautiful that part of my town looked. I had lived in that area for over ten years but yet had never taken notice of how the tracks split a tree line in such a manner.

I suppose that If I have been learning any lessons from my photography ventures it is that sometimes you miss the beauty of nature when you spend more time travelling via car versus foot. Let me encourage you to take the time to walk around in your city and observe for yourself what sits just out of sight of the roadway and maybe then you can experience what I have experienced… seeing new and beautiful things in your community that you have never seen before or never would have had you not taken that walk down the road.