Honeycomb

Yesterday I went downtown to take pictures. I wasn’t really feeling it, but wanted to get out anyway. I parked along the waterfront in Seattle near the cruise terminal. Immediately after getting out of the car I noticed a bunch of gulls hovering in the air at the end of a public pier. With my bird photography background, this was an obvious destination. I walked over to find just a couple people there. One an observer, the other was someone feeding the gulls. A man whose face I couldn’t see sitting in a chair covered with bags—a backpack with a sleeping roll in it. Walmart bags on each shoulder. A hoodie covering his head. He was reaching into a paper bag here he had a loaf of bread. He was taking pieces of the bread, breaking it up into crumbs and tossing them out to the gulls. I took a few photos of the birds and, as he ran out of bread, the other observer and the gulls slowly dispersed, I heard him say “it’s first ship of the year.” I figured he was referring to the cruise ship so I nodded and made some small talk about it. Usually this is where I’d wander off.