Some years ago my country-singer friend Wayne “Cinch” Arthur wrote and recorded a number that has been haunting my memory lately.
“I love the simple things,” the song begins, “The rainbow after the rain, / The smell of the sod on an open field.” The lyrics continue with their celebration of cool mountain streams, blue skies, “geese high on the wing,” autumn leaves, and “the glint of snow in the sun.”
I really have to agree with Cinch. I, too, love the simple things.
What no doubt triggered my consciousness of just how much I love the simple things was a note last month from Raj Patwardhan. For 10 years Raj has joined us regularly at our Cochrane coffee tables by email all the way from Mumbai, India.
You’ll recall that he contributed to our list of T-words for a beautiful person in our Dec. 5 column by suggesting “simplici-T.” “Simple things are beautiful,” he said.
Yes, the beauty of simplicity!
By now our readers are well aware of how I love to celebrate the beauty of simplicity photographically. I even purchased an Apple iPhone 5 recently as a handy complement to my bulky professional camera, just so I would always have a camera with me for capturing those unplanned beautiful moments.
Everywhere I look, the beauty of simplicity begs to have its picture taken. Streaked mud on the back of a pick-up truck? The façade of a building as seen through a coffee shop window? A typical Cochrane sunset? Absolutely!
Then there are the green trees, red roses, blue skies, white clouds – simple images so beautifully immortalized in Louis Armstrong’s rendition of “What a Wonderful World,” my unofficial theme song for these columns.
But perhaps it’s the third stanza in Satchmo’s beloved song that speaks best of the simple joy I experience whenever I sip coffee with our readers: “The colors of the rainbow / So pretty in the sky / Are also on the faces / Of people passing by” . . . .
. . . and on the faces of you folks with whom I sip coffee day by day in our simply beautiful Bow Valley.
