“I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walden
The first of June 2021, fifteen months into the pandemic. Things are beginning to open up in Columbus and I went out on a warm Sunday to capture some images of this opening. Whetstone Park was full of people and picnics and kids tossing balls and playing games. It was good to see the park crowded again with people.
I drove over to the pond in the park where there were few people and a large contingent of ducks wobbling along the edges of the pond. I stood on the little wooden bridge that goes over the pond and took the above photograph. It seemed a special moment, the pond embraced by the trees under a brilliant blue sky spotted with clouds, a thunderstorm moving in from the west. An unexpected time of reflection.
The pond presented this symbol of reflection and a moment of solitude from the park crowds. Lke all symbols, it capured me rather than me capturing it. As I walked back to my Jeep, I felt like I had been somehow “allowed” to see this image, to capture it in a brief moment. Is there a more reflective environment than the surface of a pond? The reflective water of the pond corresponded to my reflective mood. It seemed to transcend its context of “the pond in Whetstone Park” and become simply “The Pond.”