CREATING SPECIAL MOMENTS WITH STRANGERS – THE EVERGLADES OF ALL PLACES.

Through Social Network a very good friend asked her audience this question. “What was the best thing that happened to me last week?” 
My response to her question was this little random tidbit.  This little moment was a bright little surprise moment in an already wonderful road trip.  I have little moments of greatness with stranger while drawing a crowd of smiles, but this one caught me on my day off. I love those moments the best.  Let me know what you think after reading this, I’d like to hear of others and their experience of making a special little moments throughout their day.  Have a wonderful week. 
“What was the best thing that happened to me last week?” 
I had a wonderful walk on a paved walkway through the Everglades National Park with my wife yesterday. A very simple “Lowest common denominator public educational walk”. Now mind you it was such a small path in such an enormous place that you honestly don’t expect to see much. A few grasshoppers, a few buzzards overhead. Lots of circled fish tending to their nests in the water below. Occasionally we’d encounter a few good size alligators. (6-8 ft). We would be tipped off about their existence from a very excited young person that had ventured up ahead of us. 
Seriously, our expectations of wild encounters of greatness were mild at best. Yet we didn’t seem to mind. It was something on our life lists. To share a walk in the Everglades with each other. Check. And it was lovely. 
Time with my wife is always my better choice of spending my time. Rarely does anything top it for either of us, but something on this walk did. I enjoy meeting intelligent strangers in life. I seek them out like trophies. I never expected to meet a violin maker from Gainsville, Fl. The only violin maker in Gainsville I would suspect. He was from a South African Village with no electricity. Dutch heratage. Got his masters from University of Michigan. Was a lawyer in his younger days. Looked like the Owner guy in Jurasic Park. 
I found him on this little scenic walk falling behind his group of friends. He was looking overheated so I gave him my water. He was very pleased that I did so. We chatted, smiled and laughed a little at each other’s humor. He was there in the Everglades enjoying a weekend visit with a new owner of one of his violins. A Cuban twelve year old boy from Miami. He and his family, (his dad the professional photographer, mom and little sister) we’re hosting the old violin maker and his wife of over fifty years to a weekend in South Florida. It was a neat little group of people there. There in the middle of a walk on a public path in the Everglades. 

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