This is not a hat

GET back. The spirit of famed Belgian painter Rene Magritte lives in a park ranger’s vision of nature. Fernando Gomez’s pairing of his topper, also known as a Smokey, against a waterfall in Escondido Canyon Park in the Santa Monica Moutains captures the beauty of the falls -- and something more. Marketers would call it “value added.”

The urge to show the beauty of nature by improving on it has tortured many artists and cost at least one an ear. But Gomez has his feet planted on the ground. “I sat my Smokey on the rock and began to take pictures of the waterfall,” he writes of the photo. “After I took many photos of the fall and its pools, I thought it would be funny to take a picture of my Smokey. If a picture can say a thousand words, then this picture should be able to say what a park ranger does.”

The photo took third place in a Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority staff contest, but to a student of nature, it’s the tops.

-- Mary Forgione