What’s Most Wonderful?

Jake proposed “Wonderful” for his challenge this week –  but you know, Pollyanna that I am,  almost everything’s wonderful.  Even the saddest times have had moments of such bitter-sweet intensity they’re seared into my brain as outstanding moments of my life.  So where to begin, to show you wonderful?

Some months ago I posted (loads of photographs of) a morning I spent with the whales off the Sunshine Coast.  Those three or four hours were probability the most thrilling of my life.  Even more wonderful than being with elephants, you may ask?  Well, yes … somehow, being with them out there on the water was so improbable.  They could have swum on by, but no, they stopped to play for us, and with us, for no reason other than it was fun.  I can tell you, my face was sore from the grinning!   That the experience was a gift, added to its ‘wonderfulness’!  Anyway, I can’t post those shots again (if you didn’t see them then, you’ll have to go back and have a look!).

Skydiving?  Yes … wonderful!  Leaping out of a small aeroplane and arching my body into a violently flapping floaty shape as I plummeted toward the earth was pretty wonderful.  If I’d figured out how to extract a couple of stills from the souvenir clip I’d have considered posting one as ‘wonderful” – but I won’t subject you to all five minutes of its awful music (even if I could figure out how to embed it here!).   I can assure you, those fleeting moments were beyond wonderful.  Short though, and the intensity – like the memory of cold, or pain – lost to memory.

My wedding?  I’ve already posted a photograph of that wonderful day.  The great loves of my life?  Well, one’s not just mine to share, and the other – Sri Lanka – I write about all the time – so you know just how wonderful I think that is.  Flowers, forests, rivers clouds  … the sweetness of a fleeting smile, the delicious gurgle of an amused child.

What stands out in my memories though, as I sift through them to consider what I might post today, is that anything associated with animals is, to me, wonderful.  You’ve been regaled (or bored to sobs, depending on your inclinations) with photographs of my sightings of the Hanuman Troupe – every second of which has been wonderful.

There’s the extraordinary thing called an elephant’s trunk

isn’t that wonderful?

And there was one bossy elephant at Pinawella

who was obviously having the most wonderful time.

Then there’re ‘my girls’ – from the day after they arrived until today, every moment has been wonderful … and symbolic of my life here in Paradise.

Go and look at other “Wonderful”  entries.