Sometimes when I get my camera home and take a look at the photos I’ve taken, I find something I didn’t know was there when I snapped the picture. I've captured odd faces in trees, strange mushrooms growing in patterns, and will-o'-the-wisps, to name but a few. Today, wanting only to get a photo of the sailboat’s mast that reached up to the heavens, I did not notice what was behind it. I did not see it on my camera. I did not see it with my eyes from the shore. I’m not sure if it was even there, but it’s now in my photo.
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| A phantom ship in the background that I did not see when taking this photo. |
There’s a phantom schooner, behind the sailboat with the
doused mainsail, which is heading around the end of the island. What’s more, it doesn’t appear to be quite in
the water, but rather hovering just a bit above it. Now, I have lived on the ocean long enough to
know that sometimes the ocean distorts things that are far out. Sometimes the sun creates a strange
shimmering in the air above the water (and, in fact, I noticed a lot of shimmering in this area today). Sometimes
at low tide some islands can almost appear to be floating due to reflection and
refraction of light.
Then again, sometimes some things happen that I just can’t
explain. Large strange lights at night
that travel lightning quick in a horizontal line, disappearing and reappearing
islands, voices carried huge distances over the water--yes, I’ve seen and heard
many strange things. I will have to add
the phantom schooner, in broad daylight on a sunny day, to the long list of
unexplainables.
Sail on, Captain, to that exotic shore.
