Barbara Lawlor, Nederland.  For years I have had this recurring nightmare.

I find myself on the Main Street of a small town, a combination of Nederland, Central City and Gold Hill. I hear a band and see marching toward me a group of royally uniformed riders on rearing, magnificent horses, brass instruments blaring, manes flowing.

Just as I see the parade, a group of children appears on a stage to the left of me, singing. An aura of glowing light halos them. Then at the end of the street, I see flames creeping through a window in a two-story Victorian house, gables shadowed by billowing smoke. I am panicked. I don’t know which event to focus on first, but it turns out to be a moot point because I can’t find my camera. I go wandering through a crowd of people sitting in a field that suddenly appeared, on blankets, and I look closely at their belongings scattered around them, looking for my black Nikon.

Finally, while the singing, burning and riding continues its dramatic photogenic activities, I see it, sitting alone near some people, so I grab it. I feel a niggling guilt, thinking maybe it was theirs and then tell myself I will return it when I finish capturing all the action around me. I get ready to shoot and realize that it is all wrong. Not good. My digital Nikon has suddenly become my old F4 film camera. A sense of hopelessness and frustration overcomes me…Nobody sells film in Nederland anymore and I know if I go to Boulder, everything will be finished: the parade, the fire, the singing children.

This is when I wake up, usually with an overwhelming wave of relief. My camera, my black, digital Nikon is sitting on the kitchen counter where I left it. Good camera.

For 35 years I have taken pictures in our mountain community. At first, I used 35 millimeter film cameras and I was always paranoid about ruining the film before I could process it. I dreamt that I dropped the camera and the film spilled out into the killing light. Shooting a wedding was a nightmare. What If I ruined the pictures for the couple’s once in a lifetime moment?

My camera has been laughingly called my third arm, an extension of myself. People sometimes ask me where my camera is, and I whip it around from the back of my right hip where it was hanging, out of sight. Should have known, they say. I don’t go anywhere without my camera.

Last weekend, my nightmare jumped into the real world. I was taking pictures at the gigantic Mountain Forum for Peace Yard Sale and as always, I got distracted by things I had to have: a weed whacker and a basketball, both of them unbaggable, ridiculously unwieldy. Feeling blessed with the treasures I had found, I went to the checkout counter to pay and head home.

It was a busy day at my house, weed whacker and all, and it wasn’t until later in the afternoon, heading to town again, that I realized my camera was not on the kitchen counter. Nor was it in the car. I began my typical frantic search through the house, engaging the help of four boys.

Nowhere. I am used to looking for things. My glasses, my batteries, my phone, my chargers, my driver’s license, my credit card, my jacket; I can’t seem to keep them where they should be, like normal people.

This time it was serious. I went back over my day and the only reasonable explanation was that I left the camera at the yard sale. I called Ellen Moore with the MFP and told her my dilemma and she said they would keep an eye out for the camera. On Saturday morning, my son and his fiancé came to the community center and we walked the aisles of the rooms packed with stuff. Was my camera in a pile of women’s undergarments? In the toe of a pair of Crocs, sinking to the bottom, wondering why I had left her? Would she be scooped up at the end of the sale and delivered to the Goodwill in Boulder?

Nada. No camera except for a spy watch. I took an ancient Nikon I had saved “just in case” and went to the Nederland Town Cleanup to record the event that town employees worked so hard to accomplish.

Back at the yard sale, I was told that one of the volunteers said she had sold the camera. Sold my camera? I was back in my nightmare.

I then realized that I had left it at the checkout counter when I was trying to get my weed whacker and basketball under control and out to the car.

At some point between leaving and the end of the day, a woman had asked if the camera was for sale and the checkout person said sure and put a $15 price tag on it. The buyer was a little concerned that it didn’t have a cable or battery charger but bought it anyway.

Anyone who is a photographer knows how, after years of shooting with a particular camera, your hand, your thumb, your trigger finger gets used to the heft, the shape and the action. It becomes a connection as if the camera knows what you are looking for, how to catch the right angle, the right light. Any old camera won’t do.

So, we had a skinny description of the couple who had purchased the camera, but no idea of who they were, where they were from. The word went out on social media. Did anyone buy a black Nikon digital camera for $15? What are the chances of finding my friend, my workhorse?

On Saturday afternoon, the phone rang. An unfamiliar number. Crossing my fingers, I answered and yes! A woman asked for me and said indeed, she had my camera.

It was a serendipitous, fortuitous coincidence that brought my camera back to Ned. Karma? The woman, named Andrea, about my age, said her husband had decided to return to the sale to purchase an item he had been considering. The couple live on Sugarloaf Road and said they didn’t really have much connection with Nederland, probably wouldn’t have seen the announcement on Facebook and probably wouldn’t have even used the camera for a while.

The woman said she had been delighted to find a camera that was lighter to hold than hers and hadn’t even looked to see if there were any photos saved on the memory card.

The volunteers, who had been upset by the unfortunate sale, recognized the man and he admitted that they were the people who had purchased the camera and his wife called me as soon as she found out.

We were both ecstatic that the camera would be returned and agreed that she and her husband would take it to the Backdoor Theater that night and leave it with Kayla Evans, the director of the theater.

I had been at an event in Central City in the late afternoon and when it ended, headed towards to the theater, but didn’t make it in time before the doors were locked. I knocked on a few doors to no avail, so I went home figuring I would get it in the morning.

When I arrived at the yard sale, I learned that Kayla had not been at the theater the previous evening and the concession stand was all locked up and I was still without my camera, with another event in Central City coming up at 2 p.m.

Once again, I was standing in the middle of the sale aisles, feeling amputated, feeling as if my long-time nightmare had come true. A tap on my shoulder and a movie volunteer, Susan Ramsbottom, like an angel, said, “We have your camera”. The woman who purchased it came to the movies last night asking for Kayla. When she found out Kayla wasn’t there, she hesitated to leave it, but enough people working the concession stand told her not to worry, they would make sure it would find me.

Susan said, “come on” and pulled out her key to the popcorn and soda room and we looked around. In a plastic bag, on a shelf, the lens of my camera winked at me. It was one of those moments you look forward to in life. When everything works out. When the sinking feeling becomes elation.

Not only did I have my camera back, but the Sugarloaf couple donated the $15 to the Mountain Forum for Peace.

So, back off, ridiculous recurring nightmare. No more lost cameras in my dreams. My generous, caring, net-working community of Nederland has my back.

Thanks everyone who contributed to the recovery, and smile, you just might be on the other end of the lens someday.