Here is how my island constitutional began on this particular day, which was not today, mind you, as I've been finding it increasingly challenging to keep up my island wanderings, image-capturings, and blog production in any kind of consistent or single-threaded fashion. And that's okay. If this is the way my life is functioning at the moment, so be it. I will do what I can, when I can, and hopefully what I produce will still manage to possess something of passing interest to others. This is a view from my usual lookout point at the northwestern tip of the island, which means, as you may have deduced, that it is evening, the time when the sun is beginning its descent in the west. Just trees, water and sun, which form an impressively synergistic trio when it comes to the vistas that together they manage to produce.
A short ways to the southeast, my eye found something striking in this barbwire-framed view of the cloud-filled sky: causing me to think of the ways in which we attempt to keep things in or out of certain places. Interesting, that someone deemed the fence between the river and its bank worthy of barbwire. As though it could really prevent a determined person from getting to the river.
Here is a beloved pet named Lily, enjoying the evening air and the breeze-blown scents in which her doggie nose may yet take pleasure. Lily is suffering from intestinal cancer, and here you see her as she is pulled along by those who love her, a friendly neighbor couple with whom my companion and I stopped to exchange pleasantries (although Lily's condition made one of the less pleasant topics).
A little farther along, while dipping underneath the Hennepin Bridge, we encountered a photo shoot in progress. I hesitated only a moment before shooting the shoot. My island wanderings, camera in hand, have trained me to be highly sensitive to potential subjects, and to be prepared to snap them in an instant. If you're not ready & quick, a magical moment will vanish before your eyes.
I don't wonder that the photographer and his subjects chose this particular spot for their shoot, although the island boasts many extraordinarily beautiful locations for picture taking. I had only to take a few steps from where I shot the shoot, and look out over the river, to behold on its surface this stunning vision of the city's reflection. The trio of water, sun and sky here is joined by a 4th party, the interloper who will never cease trying—and failing—to improve upon nature: Man, and the lofty ambitions he plants in the earth. He may never improve upon nature, and the buildings in this picture may not be the most sublime representatives, but one must concede that the human race has, on occasion, attired the earth in some beautiful vestments and ornamented her with some dazzling baubles. At least, we seem to think so.
But let's get back to nature now, shall we? Here we encounter a daffodil at the southeastern end of the island, one of the many floral developments to emerge in recent days. The picture is presented sideways, because I prefer to view it that way. In fact, many things in life are best viewed sideways, or from above, below, or through a frame that you yourself furnish. In fact, we really can't help seeing the world through our own unique frame, when you think about it. Today I viewed phenomena consisting of animal, vegetable, and mineral, and I viewed them all through my own congenital frame. Maybe, as a result, they tend to assume a rose-colored tinge. I guess I prefer to see them that way.
I'll leave you with a close-up of the scrolled-up manner in which this popular plant makes its way out of the earth and into our field of vision (and field of landscape design). I can easily imagine how primitive peoples might have yanked one of these out of the earth, raised it like a chalice, and drank of the rainwater captured there. Nature providing for nature. We come to the earth, we see (through our own frames of reference), and we conquer. We build, we create, we love, dance, laugh and cry, we do what we can before we must die, and when that day comes, it's hosta la vista, baby! 
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