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| Dragonfly and Fuschias - DGH photo collection |
Serendipity = the ability of making happy and unexpected discoveries by accident, good luck or good fortune
Odd Happenings = when something unusual happens that would be hard to duplicate for the same effect
This post will explore some of those moments where we feel lucky to be where we are, at the right moment to see a unique event. It is preferable that these events are non-life threatening.
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The Spawning of the Grunions
(San Diego, Mission Bay area, California)
Grunions do a twisting beach dance (by the hundreds) to further their species, and it happens at night on beaches along the California coast from Monterey Bay to as far south as Baja California. The fish can remain stranded and flopping about for several minutes and there are lots of them. Spawning peaks between March and June.
We saw this phenomena on a visit to San Diego years ago, but didn’t know it was a natural cycle until we read about it. It’s a vivid image, and would have been hard to plan for. Unfortunately, I didn’t have my camera with me that night.
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| Sleek beauty at Air Museum - by DGH |
Chased by Hurricane Ivan 2004
While visiting Atlanta on personal business, I heard storm warnings about Hurricane Ivan, on its way to Atlanta. Planes were being grounded, and flights delayed. I managed to rebook my flight time to leave before Ivan hit later in the day. Things went downhill from there, with the flight I was booked to fly out on being delayed until the winds died down enough for them to land. After the plane unloaded then reloaded, we left late with no promise of making the connection in Chicago.
Arriving in O’Hare, I ran up one terminal arm and down another to arrive at an empty loading area for the airline I was on with one attendant standing there. I went up to verify that I had indeed missed the flight. He confirmed that the flight had taken off on schedule, but (he said) they had come back and were repairing a problem in the braking system. My seat had not been filled, he asked if I wanted to get on board when it left again, expected to be within 15 minutes.
A plane with a problem, hmm, but it was also an opportunity. I boarded, dressed in my usual black travelling outfit, and faced all those rows of staring faces looking at me as if I had been the problem. Not a friendly face in the whole lot. Someone was in my seat, so I was ushered to one in the back. As I settled in to my middle seat between two strangers, the woman on my left leaned over and said in a low voice, “Well, I guess we came back for you.”
I felt a little more relaxed after that, before I saw the title of the movie they were showing -- The Day after Tomorrow (in case you haven’t seen it, it’s about extreme weather conditions causing superstorms and hurricanes all over the world).
My flight reached its destination about an hour and a half late. The opportunity had paid off, I was home.
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| A Mother Bear and Cubs at the Dump - DGH collection |
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Bear Scare
Beware garbage dumps in remote areas, since they represent a supermarket to the wild bears. While coming back from the recreation centre on one side of the small company townsite in north central British Columbia, I took the channel that had been cut in the 21 feet of snow in order to get back to the staff house. Unfortunately, a Grizzly bear had the same idea. I turned around going back to the rec centre, but now another bear was coming toward me from that direction. What to do? Make snowballs of course, hard ones.
“I threw the snowballs first at the bear closest to me, attempting to discourage it without actually hitting it, my main concern being to throw as many as I could while shouting to scare it. The first bear turned and ran, and I followed at a safe distance behind running towards the staff house. He ran past, I went inside. I don’t know what happened to the other bear, it wasn’t in my best interest to wait and find out.”
(Note: this incident happened to a friend who had grown up in the big city, where bears don’t roam free.)
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Owl at Midnight on New Year’s Eve
Owls can be aggressive and especially if you’re near the nest. We’ve been swooped by owls before when walking through one of our natural parks in the Vancouver area. One incident occurred on New Year’s Eve exactly at midnight one year, when an owl sought respite from the noise by landing in a tall tree in our backyard. He sat staring directly at us from his perch, making us wonder what he saw. Food? Humans?
Just in case he was hungry, I hid my cat.
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| Rue de Rivoli, Paris - Blanche Nuit - Oct 2/10 - DGH |
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Everybody Turn Around
Gridlock on the highway, gas pipeline leak, police officers stop all traffic - just what you want to have happen when you’re out for a drive. Traffic behind us began to accumulate at a rapid pace as nothing moved. The gas leak had to be shut off first.
In the meantime, a few young determined males driving small cars got out of their cars and yelled at everyone to “Turn around, everybody turn around.” What?? The smaller vehicles might have a shorter turning base and be able to wiggle their way around, but no semi or big truck is going to be able to do that.
As about forty of the little cars turned and made their way over to the shoulder, heading back the wrong way, we moved to the front in the space just vacated. Just a couple of minutes after that, the officers cleared the barriers and traffic began to go again. Bad timing on their part?
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Write it down, analyze it later. It might be the seed for a writing project.
