Tuesday, January 01, 2008

 

Swan lake on DeaPlains River at Riverside Il. ...Dec 15 2007

I would like to take picture of this spot todaybut no one will go with me! Just because of snow,wind and 11 degrees!

Comments:
Happy New Year. Arrived home last night and today trying to catch up with my blogs.
 
Happy New Year, Lloyd. I see the development around the corner from this site of natural beauty. Better get another picture before it's all gone!
 
hi llloyd,

i came across your blog through ebb tide's. i was surfing through your pictures when i saw this one of swan lake. it is beautiful and i immediately remembered an almost same picture in my mind of a river behind my grandmother's house i used to go every summer of my childhood.

you picture it evoked a sad memory in my childhood. you see, my grandmother and relatives live in a farm in a province called iloilo. it is surrounded by big tracts of land planted to sugarcane back then. i used to run through the field during summer harvest and play with the cows and water buffalos.

one summer, i had a friend - a young water buffalo. this calf was quite friendly and the mother would let me pet and play with it. (normally water buffalos are fierce towards humans that pet their youngsters) my grandma's workers said that i had an affinity with the calf. they'd call me the spirit brother of the small beast.

on the next summer that i came back from the city the calf was now a small bull. already much bigger than the last summer, he grew up strong and sturdy. though he was till too young to plow the fields, he was already strong for me to ride his back. that summer, i enjoyed my life with my friend. we'd sit for hours by the riverbed. i'd tell him stories and dreams that a child at that age had so much of.

i bade him goodbye at the end of that second summer and promised to see him again.

after a year passed and i came back again, i was greeted by a sad news. a disease struck struck the water buffaloes in the town, and my friend was not spared. in the prime of his life when he was supposed to be string, sturdy and ready to stretch his muscles in the field, i saw him gaunt, hollow and dying. a few days into that summer, my grandma's workers had to kill him, to spare him further suffering from the disease that has ravaged the beast's body.

that summer was the saddest. i would spend days sitting by the same riverbed where i would take my friend and share him my dreams and stories. but that summer, i spent it alone.

your picture of the riverbed, brought back the sadness i felt during that summer of my childhood when i lost a friend.

thank you lloyd.
 
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