Photo of the Day: It's Like a John Denver Song

Camera: Canon 5D | Lens: EF50mm f/1.8 | Setting: f/1.8, 1/2500th sec, ISO 100

We can thank John Denver for pioneering brilliant funky outdoor make-me-feel-good music.  Maybe he didn't pioneer it but just popularized it.  He had a knack nonetheless and I raise my glass to the memory of John Denver music.

When he sings, "Sunshine / on my shoulders / makes me happy," what could be more true? Truth comes in simplicity.  As simple as teaching a little girl to blow on a real San-Juan-Mountains-of-Colorado dandelion. Corny? Cliché?  Well, look beyond that, please, and go, "Hey, how weird.  There's a kid without an iPhone."

Uncle Greg here got suckered into her ploys and took her for a ride on his shoulders, happy as sunshine, while we were camped in the San Juans of Colorado's Rocky Mountains.  You have to be careful with these toddlers because they'll want a ride, a push on a swing, a flight through the air, an hour of bouncing on the bed - and then cry and whine when you're ready to call it quits.  Can you remember being this young?  When every-freaking-moment was about maximizing fun?

St. Exupery wrote in The Little Prince, "Only the children know what they are looking for."

I don't know if we can describe this rightly - Chloe's little squeaky voice when she walks up to a sage adult with her arms stretched up in the air and she's saying, "I WANT SHOULDERS I WANT SHOULDERS I WANT SHOULDERS." It's like a drug. After you've heard her once, you'd jump out of a tall building or rob a bank just to hear her say it again. Don't tell her I said that.  It'll go straight to her head and she'll think she's entitled to a Jetta when she's 16.

Geez.  John Denver and Jettas.  How'd I get there?  Anyway, humming along now to Rocky Mountain High . . .