Take A Moment To See What Is Behind You...

Several years ago, I visited Grand Marais with my parents, sisters, and some of our children. For those of you who have never been to this beautiful Minnesota treasure, I only have five words for you…”Go as soon as possible”.  This tiny harbor village sitting on Lake Superior offers a most rugged beauty, that somehow manages to balance a Minnesota-type “outdoorsy-ness” with an eclectic and quirky vibe of an artist’s community. You can shop at the Ben Franklin (where they have everything from ant killer to Minnetonka Moccasins), you can enjoy dinner at the award-winning “Angry Trout”, you can sit in a colorful Adirondack to watch the lake, or you can stroll along the rocks of Artists Point on the lake.

On this particular family visit, we spent quite a long time walking on Artists Point, and of course, I had my camera at my side to capture each step along the way. As the day wore on and dusk approached, my family made their way back to our cabins for dinner (and likely some wine). However, I remained behind with the intent of trying to capture the beauty of the lighthouse as evening approached. There is an eerie feeling to standing on this narrow rock wall among the mighty Lake Superior and I hoped to get an image that would preserve this mood. I set up my tripod and took several shots as the sun set and the mosquitoes attacked. I was all alone, feeling very much at peace, and absolutely in the moment.

When I could no longer stand the bugs and felt I had a shot that I liked, I packed up all my equipment and started to make my way back along the wall. I was lost in thought and was carefully trying to watch my footing when something made me decide to turn around to look back at the lighthouse. It happened that at that very moment, an antique sailing ship was just coming into the harbor and passing next to the lighthouse. It was a "ghost ship" gliding quietly through the blue fog along the still lake. It was the eerie moment that I couldn’t even have known to hope for. Unfortunately, with my equipment packed and on my back, there was no time to successfully capture the image. I grabbed a quick shot just to prove to myself that it happened but I had missed the chance for a truly remarkable photo. I kicked myself about this all the way back to the cabin and then realized there was no sense in kicking myself anymore…but rather to take a lesson from the experience.

Sometimes you have to turn around to see what you’ve been looking for. We become so focused on moving forward, pushing ourselves through our days with planned agendas, commitments, and to-do lists. But I think it is important to occasionally stop the activity, turn around and look at what is behind you. Not with the intent of kicking yourself over past mistakes, but for the enjoyment of seeing something that you might have missed the first time around. With a different perspective, we can often times see things that weren’t evident to us or see things in a new way. And with that updated image in our mind, we can resume moving forward knowing that we have the full picture.

This is the photo I got when I turned around - you can just barely see the "ghost ship" to the left of the lighthouse.