The find method returns a Cursor instance, which allows you to iterate over all matching documents.
To get the first document that matches the given criteria you need to use find_one. The result of find_one is a dictionary.
You can always use the list constructor to return a list of all the documents in the collection but bear in mind that this will load all the data in memory and may not be what you want.
You should do that if you need to reuse the cursor and have a good reason not to use rewind()
Demo using find:
>>> import pymongo
>>> conn = pymongo.MongoClient()
>>> db = conn.test #test is my database
>>> col = db.spam #Here spam is my collection
>>> cur = col.find()
>>> cur
<pymongo.cursor.Cursor object at 0xb6d447ec>
>>> for doc in cur:
... print(doc) # or do something with the document
...
{'a': 1, '_id': ObjectId('54ff30faadd8f30feb90268f'), 'b': 2}
{'a': 1, 'c': 3, '_id': ObjectId('54ff32a2add8f30feb902690'), 'b': 2}
Demo using find_one:
>>> col.find_one()
{'a': 1, '_id': ObjectId('54ff30faadd8f30feb90268f'), 'b': 2}