To Whom It May (Or May Not) Concern,
Global readers are most likely unaware of the geographic beauty of the Texas Hill Country with its vistas of limestone mountains heavily clad in aromatic junipers, punctuated by cold, clear springs, streams, and the occasional emerald tarn.

Last Sunday--Easter as it happened--I betook myself country-ward to escape the incessant tolling of Austin bells and soon enough was strolling along the lovely, sun-lit shore of Lake Travis in that county park known as "Hippie Hollow" (beloved to all clothing-optionals).

A fecund spring season lay heavy on the land, dotted yellow with hardy buttercups beneath the cedars. Breathing deep to rid myself of the whole death-and-resurrection business I had left behind in the noisy city, I walked at a slow pace, the better to enjoy the constantly changing vistas across the becalmed surface of the lake's clear green water.

All was good, and getting better by the minute, when I rounded a bend in the path and there before me, not ten feet away, perched playfully on the rocks was a creature whom I had ever seen only on shards of ancient Greek red-figure pottery.

Ah. The moment was so brief. Our eyes met. His expression was one of mischievous delight. Mine? Lord knows what mine was. I stopped and without thinking raised my camera and pressed the shutter button once. At that almost inaudible sound, the creature bounded up and away, vanishing with the speed of a frightened mountain goat.

He was there, and then he was gone. All that was left to me was astonishment tinged by doubts about my sanity.

And one image, attached to this message.

For the photophiles among you, I should perhaps explain. Though my instrument is a high-end digital SLR, I shoot only black-and-white, and that at the lowest resolution the camera allows. Such a habit, please understand, allows me to retain the illusion of that photographic innocence which pours from the pioneer images of the earliest picture-takers in that lost era of true wonder known as the nineteenth century.

What did I see? I don't know. What did the camera see? Judge for yourself, friend.