The Minnesota Farm Woman

I have been nearsighted most of my life. In the fourth grade, my best friend Terri and I got our  glasses on the same day. My mother has  a picture of the two of us, big grins on our faces and shiny new glasses perched on our noses.  I switched to contact lenses in high school and have worn them ever since.  Contacts can distort the finer details, however,  especially details in the great outdoors, which can be a kaleidoscope of greens, blues, and browns.  Or maybe it’s just me. It can be frustrating when I am with Terri who can spot a morel mushroom fifty feet away when I probably step on more than I pick every year.  She can also spot an eagle from any distance  and has many beautiful photographs to prove it. Last week, as I was drinking my morning coffee and looking out the window I finally spotted an eagle, high atop a utility pole near the creek. The suckers were running, and I thought perhaps the eagle was looking for fish to feed her nestlings.  Not wanting to miss out on a great photo-op I grabbed my camera and ever so quietly crept out the back door, hair uncombed, wearing baggy sweat pants, a red  t-shirt,  and on my feet,  a pair of bright blue plastic Crocs .  The Crocs were a gift from my daughter, who thinks for some reason that I need  little more style and color in my life. The eagle chose her fishing spot close to the busy road rather than back in the more private spots along the creek, but I wanted this picture so badly I would have climbed a tree to get it.  There were, of course, people driving down the road.  Slowly. They were probably looking at the eagle themselves, and since almost everybody has camera phones, I thought their pictures would show up on the internet somewhere, perhaps with the caption “Land of the Free”.  Thinking about how lucky I was to be living in this beautiful country, I quietly moved closer and closer, using the viewfinder of the camera.  Where was the eagle? Did it fly away? I squinted, looking to the top of the pole. There she was, sitting majestically atop the pole, nature at its absolute finest. Until I rubbed my eyes and saw an electrical transformer.  Wider at the top, narrow at the bottom, and  a small puff of white cloud in just the right spot that from a distance, these nearsighted eyes easily mistook for an eagle’s white head.  But the drivers were still slowing down as they go past.  What are they looking at? Oh. Oops. I hope they didn’t all have camera phones. I hope that somebody doesn’t post a picture on the internet with the caption “A Minnesota Farm Woman”, or worse yet, send it to “What Not to Wear”.  I think I’ll give up on photography. If a picture is worth a thousand words, I’ll happily write more than a thousand. Writing is so much easier. It can be done inside, wearing baggy sweatpants and bright blue shoes and nobody will ever know the difference.