T Rex Stampede
Nashville is a tourist town. We are into having fun 24/7. There are worse places to live, right? I moved here in 2016, to be near my daughter and her family, but also, in part, because it seemed like it could be a place of opportunity for street photography. Let me assure you, street photography was never going to happen for me in Birmingham, Alabama.
It took a while to warm up to the opportunities, but by the end of 2019 I was checking the event calendar and going out every week. I went to the county fairs, the Cherry Blossom Festival, the Celebrate Nashville Festival, the Pride Festival, Live on the Green, which is the free music festival, plus a host of events in Centennial Park and Cheekwood. There seemed like endless possibilities for street photography at the beginning of 2020. Then the world took an unexpected turn.
My pandemic experience was not very different from other people’s pandemic experience. There was a whole lot of alone time. When September, 2020 came around, I was ready to take my chances with getting out, vaccine or no vaccine. On September 19, the first of my weekly visits to the city restarted. There were new rules. Mask up. That was rather a novelty in Nashville. No going inside any place. That certainly had implications. Perhaps only in Nashville, there were visitors out and about. The honky tonk establishments were open. It was quite an opportunity to take street photography in the entertainment district without the massive crowds.
All of this is to set the stage for a late afternoon trip on November 1. There was nothing that made me think it would be a special day. There was really no point in checking the calendar for events. But there was a huge surprise as I got to Broadway after my walk down 2nd Avenue. The T Rex dinosaurs were out and about. I could not believe my eyes. My heart actually soared with delight. There had been precious little “soaring” for the better part of a year. I felt hope.
It is kind of hard to imagine that I missed the T Rex Stampede the next year. It took place on October 23, 2021, much earlier than expected. I was pretty determined to not make that mistake ever again. The whole parade this year took about 15 minutes. Most onlookers were surprised with it, which gives it a very impromptu vibe. I did not feel the same thrill as I did in 2020, but I surely remembered the total delight that I felt that year.
It is my theory that photography, like music, has the ability to trigger memories and feelings. That can cloud our ability to properly evaluate the quality of our photos because when we look at them we remember the moments in a way that our viewers cannot possibly experience. When I look at my T Rex pictures, old or new, as unlikely as it seems, I cannot help but feel hope.