those fences

Serendipity: (happy) chance, fluke, luck.

This is the picture my husband came home with on Monday after a day in the mountains with the boys. A day way up in the mountains with snow and hiking and . . . a random row of skis. Yes, skis. They're beautiful (don't you think?) in such an odd sort of way. Not particularly spectacular, and certainly not the sort of beautiful one expects to find 30 miles into Nowhere. But still. I found them so lovely that I already included this picture in Wednesday's ode, and yet here they are showing up again just a day later.

But the story is too quirky, too fluky, to skip, once you pair it up with the next picture.

Because later that same day I took the 12 year-old out for a date (here's to a boy who can handle two sick little kids and two bored larger ones while his parents are watching his third sister downtown in a play -- downright heroic, that boy) and I noticed the camera in the backseat.

"We need to swing down this dirt road for a second first," I said. "There is the craziest fence I keep meaning to show dad."

"Oh really?" he said. "We saw a crazy fence today too. Up in the canyon."

And just like that, we had eight pictures on the camera card, six of which featured ski fences.

I'm no good at guessing odds (or distance, or age, or even the hour, for that matter), but there has got to be a way to determine the odds of two different people taking pictures of two different ski fences on the same day with the same camera, completely unawares of what the other has done.

I mean really. Can you imagine the odds on that one? Makes the odds of winning the Big Mega Powerball Monster Lottery seem unbelievably short.

Serendipity. Definitely.