To Fit the Frame

I was watching out the window as a girl crossed the lawn.  She wasn't in a hurry.  No, simply strolling, arm clutching her bag and a camera in her hand.  The lighting was perfect.  Hardly a shadow fell through the frame.  No shadows cast about the grounds.  I rearranged my skirt and sat on the window ledge. 

She breathed deeply.  The crisp country air rejuvinating her soul.  She was preoccupied with the surrounding scenery.  Green as far as the eye could see.  Blades of grass and trees, surprising freedom not far from the city.  And then she turned.

I saw her eyes get wide.  The beauty of the mansion took away her breath.  There wasn't another soul in sight.  She had the mansion all to herself.  The building rose up, a white structure out of the greenest grass, the marvels which lay within masked by sunlight and majesty.  She lifted her camera to take a picture and then frowned.  Slowly she began taking small steps backward.  The entirety of the three levels of windows would not fit in the frame.  Step after step she checked the view on the screen and still it would not fit.

Then suddenly she couldn't see it at all.  Four feet down off a wall into the pasture below she fell.  The very pasture that had lay hidden to her now welcomed her.  The noon light had cast it's illusion and the ditch had all but disappeared; easy to blame a lazy gardener on the abrupt end of the perfectly manicured lawn into a free growing field.  But no, it was a pasture.  I would have gasped if I hadn't known it might have happened.

She looked up from her back and wondered how she got there.  Her friend that I had not seen come up the path had raced over.  I could hear her voice drift up to the window.  My camera won't work, she said.  Her friend helped pull her back onto the grounds and helped her dust off, luckily nothing else broken.  I smiled at their camaraderie.  They exchange looks and then burst out laughing.

I marvel at what I just witnessed.  In all my years of watching travelers come to visit this place, none have fallen off the wall.  There are few who venture out that far.  But, impressed as I was that this young woman fell, impressed I was also when her friend skillfully leaned back out over the ditch and fit the house into the frame of her own camera.

There is something special in the experiences of travelling.  But, from these two women I have learned that when travelling always take a friend with you if not only to hoist you out of the ditch when you fall. 


To Fit the Frame © 2012 Katherine Kovanda