When I was an invincible teenager, I used to walk barefoot around the neighborhood lake. One time I stepped on a rusty fishhook someone had carelessly discarded. Sometimes a foot landed in dog poop or on a mound of fire ants. And on one occasion, while strolling through a patch of clover, I got stung by a bee.My neighbors consider clover a weed, although it is possible to buy seeds online and plant them as ground cover. I understand why people pull this plant from their lawns. The leaves are nondescript, and the flowers, viewed from eyes five or six feet off the ground, are nothing special: yellowish white puffballs that brown with age, colors reminiscent of used cigarette butts.
The first time I tried my newest camera lens, a 300 mm, I was shooting anything that caught my eye, not at all attempting to make "art." I took several shots of the puffball flowers in a clover patch. After dumping these images into the computer and viewing them, I was mightily impressed with the intricate petals that fell away from the centers, row by row.
I noticed also that a patch of clover, so inconsequential to me, was a tiny world full of activity. Bees, for example, visited flower after flower collecting nectar and pollen, like migrant workers harvesting fruit in strange groves.I can't count the times I have stomped through clover—now with feet safe in shoes—while walking the dogs. I don't know how many tiny creatures I have crushed underfoot after Yo-Yo or Bug has dragged me off the sidewalk to one more interesting spot to sniff.
I do know that if I sit quietly by a patch, I will soon notice movement as this little nectar oasis teems with tiny life. I can take a vacation from my giant world to visit a different country, one without UN representation. I get to experience a culture that I don't understand, its citizens speaking and behaving in ways I can't translate with accuracy.
I have friends who are constantly traveling: Germany for spring break, Miami for a conference, New York City for technical training. Part of me feels that I miss something by not leaving home more. And yet when I am visiting a little world underfoot, I do vacation from my everyday life and sample a new culture. Plus I have the travel pictures to prove it!
