Stormlight Near Athens

It wasn’t planned. Almost nothing good ever is.

Warren, my oldest friend — first grade, lunchboxes, a hundred lifetimes ago — was in town. The kind of visit laced with purpose: family roots, cemetery stops, a bit of East Texas memory-mending. We headed out southeast from Dallas on Highway 175, riding the thin edge of a storm all day long. Never in the thick of it, just always a half-step behind or ahead of a quiet rain. The kind of day that feels paused between one thought and the next.

When I got home — shirt torn, shoulders tired, mind stilled — I stitched those images into one seamless piece. The clouds held. The land glowed.

We passed Athens. Pulled over at a gas station. I stepped out for air and caffeine and realized exactly where I was.

There’s a spot on 175 I’ve admired for decades. Never photographed it. Always meant to. Always didn’t. But this time, something clicked. I saw the clouds boiling above the rolling pasture, the sky split between tension and stillness — and I knew I wasn’t going to let it pass again.

Grabbed the camera. Crossed the highway. Tore my shirt on a barbed wire fence — yes, I was trespassing, but trespass is just another word for commitment when the light is right. Climbed the embankment, walked a hundred feet, and there it was: a pastoral panorama I’d carried in my head for years, finally laid out in full view. It was moody and soft, ominous and wide open — like a sigh rolling through the grass.

Years of panoramic work had made the steps second nature. Manual settings. Overlapping frames. Rotating the camera precisely on its no-parallax point — not your spine, but the sweet spot within the lens where everything blends together. Seven frames. Just enough to hold the breadth of it all without breaking the balance.

When I got home — shirt torn, shoulders tired, mind stilled — I stitched those images into one seamless piece. The clouds held. The land glowed. The quiet insistence of that moment stayed intact.

I’d finally stopped for the thing I’d always meant to but always didn’t. And that, in itself, was worth the drive.

Describe a time weather changed your plans but gifted you a story.

— Lawrence

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