Pollard Park sits in Richmond’s Northside, in the Ginter Park Terrace neighborhood. I was living a few blocks away in a different one and passed it often. For some reason, I found myself there on New Year’s Day 2015. It was a cool but beautiful day — at least according to the pictures I made — so I may have been persuaded to go for a walk. You know, that new year, new me/us kind of thing. And of course, I had my camera with me.

I love sycamore (pronounced sik-a-mo around here) trees in the winter. Their white bark shines among duller companions. I had been watching this one for a while, wanting to stop and photograph it. On that first day of the year, it stood proudly, beaming against a blue sky. I made a few images, thanked it, and went home happy.

Around that time, I was part of a ten-month course at Richmond Hill — an ecumenical fellowship and retreat center in the city’s Church Hill neighborhood, just a couple of blocks from St. John’s Church, where Patrick Henry once gave his “Give Me Liberty” speech. The course focused on calling and discernment, and I shared the photograph with our small group to show the quiet majesty of the tree.

One of the members asked where it was. When I told her, she seemed genuinely surprised. She had lived less than two blocks from Pollard Park for more than forty years and had never noticed the tree.

She had watched it grow — or not watched it — year by year, season by season. We get blind to things like that. That sycamore was new to me. And yet, I’m sure there are oaks I pass every day here at home that would feel just as new to her. Perspective has a way of working both directions.

We left Richmond two years later and I haven’t seen that old sycamore since. But when I see the ones around here, shining dull in winter, I smile and think of the one in Richmond — and of the woman who grew up with it, but never really saw it.

How much do we miss simply by not looking up? By being too preoccupied with the things that pull at us day after day.

A few people have told me that they’ve started looking up — paying attention — because of the images I’ve shared. That means more to me than I know how to say yet.

When we got home that day, I cooked a traditional New Year’s Day meal: hog jowl, black-eyed peas, greens, and cornbread. A celebratory dinner for walking (probably)— and a quiet hope for good luck in the year ahead.