Billowy white clouds bunched across the blue of the sky as I drove across a bridge one day. A panoramic view of the sky revealed thin rays of sun that stretched downward toward the water. I sighed at the beauty of it.

When I’m a passenger in a car during a long drive on an interstate highway, I sometimes look skyward to relieve the boredom. It doesn’t take long before I’ve discovered castles, fluffy animals, even villages floating high above me. Then, suddenly those forms break away to reveal other fascinating objects.

Then sometime things that are very real appear to be something they are not. A wild vine with white blossoms resembling a morning glory bloom that snakes across the ground sometimes fools me. It is pretty when you are close enough to recognize it, but occasionally my first impression is that someone has littered a yard or field with shredded white paper.

On a route my husband and I traveled for several years, we passed a spot along the road at night where I always saw a camel. In daylight it was just a tall post with some bushes growing close with a vine climbing it. No sign of a camel then. But when a car’s headlights touched it after nightfall, it transformed into my camel. Although I guess I saw that camel just about every night we drove by it, I never mentioned it to my husband. Then once as our headlights flashed on that spot he said, “Ever noticed that looks like a camel in front of us?” I knew then my imagination was not as wild as I had thought it was.

I have to admit though that sometimes it has worked overtime. One morning as I drove down the dirt road in front of the house where we lived, I saw something ahead. It looked like one of those big dogs in our neighborhood lay stretched out across the road. As I edged closer, I saw it was nothing but a couple of limbs that had blown down during a thunderstorm.

I sometimes encountered pleasant sights on my drives to work, real things of beauty. Along my route, I noticed a mailbox with a pole entwined with ivy. It grew like an upside down cone and stretched out over the box like a hood, stopping before it hampered access to the box. I enjoyed a milepost adorned with a morning glory vine. Its blossoms sparkled with dew in the morning sunshine, a show put on by nature.

A clever gardener or plant lover had created a scene that turned my head. A bed of purple and orange flowers encircled a plow on the edge of a lawn. During the summer, a beautiful garden resplendent with rows and rows of shimmering orange, pink, purple, and red flowers caught my eye.

Those brief glimpses of things of beauty brought a smile to my lips and helped to start my day right.