My wife tells people that she moved to Asheville because of the North Carolina Arboretum, and I believe it’s true — she’s not a woman to be doubted. That said, I’m as apt as she is to suggest we head down Brevard Road for a visit. And when I saw this lotus blossom there, I thought I should dedicate a photograph of it to the bobcat my daughter once hit in Brattleboro, Vermont.
I suppose a dead bobcat is as worthy of a lotus blossom as a dead anything else, but this flower does not honor the death but rather the story the bobcat left.
And the story is this: The day after the car insurance claim was filed (if you’re going to hit a 60-pound bobcat, go larger than a Matrix), an agent called: “Mr. Bohanan, do I understand correctly that your daughter hit a bobcat?” “Yup, you do. She did.” “Well, could you tell me, was that … was that bobcat, you know …. an animal, or was it like … one of those little tractors?” It kind of made my day.
And I’m not going to tell you that a good story is worth the life of a bobcat, or that this story was worth all the hassles of getting the Matrix put back together, but what I will tell you is that with every sharing of the story, and with every passing month, that gap does narrow.
Photographer Craig Bohanan’s blog can be found here.
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