Some places are more magical when you don’t take pictures of them.
Sometimes, the woods along a little river can be lit by the perfect evening sun so they become the perfect shades of green and sandy brown. Sunlight slides through the spring leaves, peeking out from between the branches, and reflections in the smooth water seem to be another world. Birds chirp and sing, and squirrels bounce from limb to limb, tree to tree, scampering quickly over deep puddles in the path which you must navigate so carefully around. Two small children – a boy and girl – run and laugh with each other in the grassy glade across the stream, the last long beams of the setting sun reaching out toward them to grab hold of their joy before descending behind wooded, budding mountains.
A photo cannot capture this.
Neither can a still, flat photo capture the magic that comes with books. There is magic in all books, but sometimes a bookstore comes along with a name like A Caperson Books that makes the wonder of ordinary bookstores pale and small. The inset door seems made of gold, the entrance to a paradise unattainable, and the hush inside that is broken only by an occasional car heard through the still closing door rests in stark contrast to the full orchestra that has begun to play in your soul, reflecting so much the exuberance that overwhelms your senses so that no outward reaction is even possible.
Books are everywhere. Floor to ceiling, stuffed everywhere they will go, stacked on the floor when the shelves are full. The small square footage of the shop is maximized by shelves that protrude from the walls and curl in, creating many tiny nooks in which a subject (the Civil War, the Great Lakes, Religion) has its very own kingdom, complete with turrets and flying buttresses. Children’s books line longer walls at the very back, providing a larger collection of early 1900’s syndicate volumes than you’ve probably ever seen in one place. Beside them is a staircase where a narrow shelf houses the rare, the ancient, the expensive – the beautiful.
A photo cannot capture all of this. A photo cannot describe the smell. A photo would show books – yes. Many books, for sure. But a photo would not tell you the feel of the pink velvet sitting chairs in the perfectly sunlit reading nook or how they seem to envelop you when you sit in them, bigger than real life, or show you the ripple of the sheer curtains that blow in a divine breeze like waves on the lake shore beach.
Photos are great. The moments in life that are made pale by being frozen in them are magical.