I love taking walks during my lunch break. I work in an office building near the highway. You can walk through a tunnel to the other side of the highway, where you will find green meadows and lots of animals. Often, I walk along the green fields and trees, and the walk takes about 45 minutes. But yesterday I did things differently.
My knee has been hurting since last Friday. Back in 2011, I had a bicycle accident in which I tore off my ACL in my right knee, and I also managed to tear my meniscus such that it was stuck within the joint, preventing me from stretching my leg. After waiting for about five weeks (due to hospital error) I finally got surgery and I had to rehabilitate for another six weeks or so before I could start to put a bit more pressure on my knee. It took me about half a year to return to almost normal function. Fortunately, I almost never experience discomfort in my knee, just some aches when the weather turns (I’ve turned into a sailor!) and I cannot stretch the knee as much as before the whole ordeal. But I can walk and run and cycle and everything, so I’m quite grateful for modern medical science.
However, as I said, my knee was hurting for a few days already. I woke up with it. It felt similar to when I was rehabilitating, so I figured that I must have overextended it a bit. I tried to go about my business just like normal, but it didn’t improve. So yesterday I decided to give my knee some rest, and instead of walking the usual route around the fields, I would walk the small path into the fields themselves and enjoy the weather without walking too much.
I would like to walk the path from yesterday more often, but because of time constraints, I can only walk it back and forth, as opposed to my usual route. That also passes by the local animal shelter (hi kitties!) and through a small forest, so it’s more interesting. But it was rather enjoyable to walk into the fields for a change. There weren’t many people there, but the people that were there were standing around, pointing at the water from time to time. This perked my interest.
I walked into the fields and heard some splashing noises from time to time. Not surprising, because often, when I pass coots that are in the water next to me, they take a short dive until I have passed. I didn’t think much of it until the splashing noises became longer and occurred more often. I started to look at the water more intently, and at first, I couldn’t really make out what was causing the splashes.
It was quite large though. And there was more than one of whatever it was.
Did I see a tail? Was it a coot after all?
Then I realised that these were actually large fish, coming to the surface, and dancing around! I saw the sunlight reflecting on their scales.
I even caught the face of one of them on camera. Cool. I don’t know much about fish, or animals in general, but I think these are carps. I continued walking towards a small bridge and looked down into the water directly.
This one was rather small compared to most of the dancing carps out there, but at least now I could get a good look. I wondered what they were doing and why. Was it mating season? Were they hunting? Were they fighting, or perhaps playing?
I spent quite some time watching the carps dance. I forgot about the pain in my knee, and just enjoyed the warm sun, the playful carps, the waterfowl, the flowers, the few insects that I saw… Life is good!
By the way, I took the photos and video using a vintage lens, a Konica Hexanon 57mm f/1.4 with adapter on my Fujifilm X-T20 and a manual approximation of the Eterna film preset. I think it works well, and I’m amazed by the sharpness of the lens on digital. The carp photos are all crops and they are still decent.
I looked up dancing carps on Google, and apparently it’s a thing. Nobody knows why they do it, although there are some theories floating around. I think they’re just having fun. Humans take a dive into the water, carps take a dive into the air. Or maybe they just want to get a tan.
