Wonder is dead in our culture. With technology rushing ahead at breakneck speed, we have grown accustomed to yawning at things that would have knocked our socks off 100 years ago. Take flying for example, roughly half or more of the people in window seats don't even bother to look out the window anymore. Another example, and one I want to dwell on for a minute is the miracle of radio. It is a marvel that we can listen to the musings of a man speaking into a microphone a dozen or even hundreds of miles away. I tried explaining this to Calvin the other day. We were driving out to the lake and happened to pass the radio station we were listening to at that moment. His mouth hung wide open in a confused awe as he processed this new piece of information. I hope he stays that way, but the odds are stacked against him.
After the sun goes down it quits interfering with radio waves allowing them to travel hundreds and even thousands of miles away. This means that you can listen to a Yankees game on their flagship station while driving through Indiana or listen to a weather report from Toronto while sitting in your kitchen in Kansas City. In the age of satellite tv, the internet, and cell phones this is completely unremarkable and not even worth talking about. All of that information can be found countless other ways. And really how relevant is a traffic jam on Lake Shore Drive in Chicago when I'm driving on Interstate 10 in Texas 1,242 miles to the south? It is irrelevant, it is outdated, corny even; but man, is it fascinating.
I found this out years ago while driving from New Jersey to Texas with my dad. We were listening to our local radio statio out of New York City when we started and roughly eleven hours and 700 miles later we were still listening to it. Later in life I picked up that same radio station in the Virgin Islands. I really got into this during our years in Kansas City, as we had multiple late night runs from KC to northwestern Wisconsin to visit Jen's family. We had an older car with a dial on the radio (much better for this activity than the current digital tuners) and I found that fiddling with the dial, my ears on high alert as I sifted through the fog of static and squeals searching for distant voices, was a great way to stay awake through the night. The search is fun, (think audible treasure hunt) and the payoff when you actually find a far off station is well worth it. Hearing an argument over a neighborhood issue in the Garfield Heights section of Cleveland gives you a proper perspective by making the world seem bigger and smaller all at once. It appears bigger when you realize the world is full of billions of people and neighborhoods you'd never even considered who are passionate about places you didn't even know existed. Sometimes it's easy to forget that your issues are not the only issues, but eavesdropping on a local radio show in another state quickly reminds you of this. The world seems smaller when you realize that even though the specifics are different, we're all arguing about a lot of the same things.
Radio has been called the theater of the mind, a befitting description, especially when hearing weather reports from distant locales. I remember once listening to Monday Night Football on a station out of New Orleans as I drove through Iowa farmland on a still, cold late fall night. As I tried to keep warm and awake, the game was interupted every few minutes with a severe thunderstorm warning for the New Orleans area. Before long my mind was down on the bayou, racing around trying to batten down the hatches before the storm blew in. Driving home from Dallas here recently, I picked up news of a blizzard from a local station out of Denver. There is a difference between hearing "there was a blizzard in Denver" and "it's cold out there folks, we'll have wind and driving snow all night, please stay indoors and off the roads." The local ads, accents (find Boston and you've hit the jackpot), and worries all combine to take you far away, which at 2 am on the highway is where you want to be anyways. All it takes is a little patience, a high tolerance for static, and an old fashioned sense of wonder.
Tuesday, October 31, 2006
Saturday, October 28, 2006
An Articulate Mind
The summer after Jen and I met in Kenya, we went to Tanzania where we met three people you will hear about in this blog, Walter, John, and Marilyn.
Even though we were about the same age, John and I were years apart in maturity, myself stuck at age thirteen and he, already advancing well into his mid thirties while still physically seventeen. The difference can clearly be seen in the photos in Jen's scrapbook. John engaged in serious discussion with a Tanzanian, me making faces at the camera, John hard at work, me making faces at the camera, on and on it goes. Jen and I noticed that in several group photos, John can be seen in the background talking with the locals which, apparently, was why we all went there in the first place.
I first started reading John's thoughts on myspace and ate them up. He recently shut down that site and opened one up on blogspot. I have linked it on the side bar under ahavafriend. He just started it so there's only three posts but this is one you will definetly want to check out from time to time.
And John if you read this, I am begging, b-e-g-g-i-n-g you to retell Pigs on a Plane. That was one for the ages.
Even though we were about the same age, John and I were years apart in maturity, myself stuck at age thirteen and he, already advancing well into his mid thirties while still physically seventeen. The difference can clearly be seen in the photos in Jen's scrapbook. John engaged in serious discussion with a Tanzanian, me making faces at the camera, John hard at work, me making faces at the camera, on and on it goes. Jen and I noticed that in several group photos, John can be seen in the background talking with the locals which, apparently, was why we all went there in the first place.
I first started reading John's thoughts on myspace and ate them up. He recently shut down that site and opened one up on blogspot. I have linked it on the side bar under ahavafriend. He just started it so there's only three posts but this is one you will definetly want to check out from time to time.
And John if you read this, I am begging, b-e-g-g-i-n-g you to retell Pigs on a Plane. That was one for the ages.
Saturday, October 21, 2006
Cold Weather
Ahhh, finally cold weather has arrived in South Texas. Which is to say, that between midnight and eight a.m. it is somewhere in the low to mid fifties. It is not enough but we'll take what we can get. Since many of our fellow Texans have actually fled here from points North to escape the cold, our joy at it's brief visit puts us squarely in the minority. As a young man I was never too crazy about cold weather either but somewhere around age 19, I turned a corner, embraced the cold and have never looked back. And now like any kind person who has seen the light, I feel compelled to spread the word.
If you were asked to think of a type of weather that brings you to an ecstatic awareness of the world around you, you would most likely think of a spring day with the sun warming your skin as you walked through green fields with flowers blooming all around, or perhaps a dip in the cool blue sea to beat the summer heat. That's all good and great and I love those things too but I would like to propose that winter is every bit as sensual as the more popular spring and summer. This common knowledge to millions of happy Norwegians, Minnessotans, and Inuits, will comes as a surprise to many of my Southern friends as they have never experienced cold in it's rightful habitat. Cold weather when it descends this far South always comes as an intruder, an unwelcome visitor who disturbs the natural order of things and so I can't really blame them for the fear they display towards the cooler temps.
In Defense of a Frigid Day
Cold weather enhances almost to the point of exaggeration, the value of common things in our daily lives. Take coffee for example. During the summer coffee is a habit, something we drink because we have no choice. In the winter it is takes on this life sustaining quality. That first hot sip spreading warmth through your chest, the warmth of the mug in your hands, the steam rising off the surface and spreading across your face as you draw the cup closer to your face. Bliss. Sustenance. Strength. This luxurious moment brought to you courtesy of winter.
No matter what your feelings for it the rest of the year, your house on a cold winter's night takes on an almost Thomas Kincade like quality. More than a shelter from the elements, it becomes a sanctaury bathed in golden light, warm, full of loved ones and good food. And the bedding, oh thank you Jesus for our beds on a cold winter's night. How is it that someone in their mid thirties, having laid down to sleep in excess of 12,000 times in his or her life life can lay between flannel sheets, under a down comforter as if for the very first time?
Even breathing it's self is transformed. What is a subconcious reflex in warmer times becomes an act of subtle delight as each breath fills your lungs with cold air. Vigor! Breathing in winter is as refreshing as a glass of ice water is on a hot summer's day.
The key to enjoying winter is in dressing appropriately. It brings such a feeling of contentment to move about in sub freezing weather feeling the cold only on your face as your boots, gloves, hat and jacket surround you in a protective cocoon of warmth. And you look great too. Take the grumpiest person on a bad day, dress them in a parka with a wool hat and they appear downright huggable.
In the summer it is nearly impossible to cool off and any relief you find is predicated upon your moving and exerting as little energy as possible. In the winter the exact opposite is true, the more you move and exert the warmer you become. Say, you were chopping wood or playing offensive line for the Green Bay Packers on a 12 degree afternoon, it would be possible to generate enough heat that you could shed your coat and labor in a short sleeve shirt and the heat would still rise off your back and head in plumes of steam.
In his book"We Are Still Married", Garrison Keillor describes jump starting his neighbor's car on a morning when the thermometer was well below zero. I will leave with the following excerpt: "We finally get her started and then go into her kitchen for a cup of coffee-we say, 'Hooooo, it's a cold one out there. You hear the weather this morning? Cold out there. Terrible.' Except it's not terrible at all. You're a man who is phenomenally alive, your whole body, the nervous system and along the cortex and in the marrow of the bones, every part of the body has got the message: 'Heat. Let's go. Come on team. Little more H now. Let's have some more H.' There is no depression at twenty below... You venture out and every internal organ is up on it's feet doing the schottische, your skin is singing the Habanera."
If you were asked to think of a type of weather that brings you to an ecstatic awareness of the world around you, you would most likely think of a spring day with the sun warming your skin as you walked through green fields with flowers blooming all around, or perhaps a dip in the cool blue sea to beat the summer heat. That's all good and great and I love those things too but I would like to propose that winter is every bit as sensual as the more popular spring and summer. This common knowledge to millions of happy Norwegians, Minnessotans, and Inuits, will comes as a surprise to many of my Southern friends as they have never experienced cold in it's rightful habitat. Cold weather when it descends this far South always comes as an intruder, an unwelcome visitor who disturbs the natural order of things and so I can't really blame them for the fear they display towards the cooler temps.
In Defense of a Frigid Day
Cold weather enhances almost to the point of exaggeration, the value of common things in our daily lives. Take coffee for example. During the summer coffee is a habit, something we drink because we have no choice. In the winter it is takes on this life sustaining quality. That first hot sip spreading warmth through your chest, the warmth of the mug in your hands, the steam rising off the surface and spreading across your face as you draw the cup closer to your face. Bliss. Sustenance. Strength. This luxurious moment brought to you courtesy of winter.
No matter what your feelings for it the rest of the year, your house on a cold winter's night takes on an almost Thomas Kincade like quality. More than a shelter from the elements, it becomes a sanctaury bathed in golden light, warm, full of loved ones and good food. And the bedding, oh thank you Jesus for our beds on a cold winter's night. How is it that someone in their mid thirties, having laid down to sleep in excess of 12,000 times in his or her life life can lay between flannel sheets, under a down comforter as if for the very first time?
Even breathing it's self is transformed. What is a subconcious reflex in warmer times becomes an act of subtle delight as each breath fills your lungs with cold air. Vigor! Breathing in winter is as refreshing as a glass of ice water is on a hot summer's day.
The key to enjoying winter is in dressing appropriately. It brings such a feeling of contentment to move about in sub freezing weather feeling the cold only on your face as your boots, gloves, hat and jacket surround you in a protective cocoon of warmth. And you look great too. Take the grumpiest person on a bad day, dress them in a parka with a wool hat and they appear downright huggable.
In the summer it is nearly impossible to cool off and any relief you find is predicated upon your moving and exerting as little energy as possible. In the winter the exact opposite is true, the more you move and exert the warmer you become. Say, you were chopping wood or playing offensive line for the Green Bay Packers on a 12 degree afternoon, it would be possible to generate enough heat that you could shed your coat and labor in a short sleeve shirt and the heat would still rise off your back and head in plumes of steam.
In his book"We Are Still Married", Garrison Keillor describes jump starting his neighbor's car on a morning when the thermometer was well below zero. I will leave with the following excerpt: "We finally get her started and then go into her kitchen for a cup of coffee-we say, 'Hooooo, it's a cold one out there. You hear the weather this morning? Cold out there. Terrible.' Except it's not terrible at all. You're a man who is phenomenally alive, your whole body, the nervous system and along the cortex and in the marrow of the bones, every part of the body has got the message: 'Heat. Let's go. Come on team. Little more H now. Let's have some more H.' There is no depression at twenty below... You venture out and every internal organ is up on it's feet doing the schottische, your skin is singing the Habanera."
Friday, October 20, 2006
The Station Agent
So, it's Friday night and you and your honey decide it's going to be an ice cream and movie night. She doesn't want you to go to the video store because she's afraid you'll come back with an Adam Sandler movie, you don't want her to go because you're afraid she'll come back with a ballroom dancing movie and you can't go together because well, for some crazy reason the kids get freaked out by all those videos that feature bloody women in lingerie on the cover. What to do? I have a suggestion, why not rent a movie about a midget who lives in an old, neglected, one room, former train depot in rural New Jersey?
The Best Movie Youve Never Heard Of
I can not tell you how many times I have walked into Blockbuster after a six week absence thinking, "surely one good movie has come out in the last six weeks", only to walk out half an hour later emptyhanded. It seems like they are only making two to three good movies a year anymore. Sometimes out of desperation Jen or I will take a chance on some unheard of movie that looks kind of different. There is no in between with these movies, they are either spectacular or spectacular flops. A lot of these movies are really different, lots of long pauses, extreme close-ups, fuzzy shots; random, inexplicable scenes, etc... You know what I mean, you've probably suffered through your fair share of them. The Station Agent is not one of these movies. There is an old saying that runs something like," don't be different to be different, be different to be better." The Station Agent is different and it is the best movie to come out in the last three years.
It is slow. There are frequent moments of silence or limited dialogue. There is a lot of cursing, and one of the film's major themes is pain. Have I convinced you to see it yet?
It is also full of hope, kindness, and love. It has some truly funny scenes that are all the funnier for the subtle ways in which they are delivered. The scenery is lush and rich, the dialogue rings true, the acting rings true, the silence rings true. All three of the main characters are extremely likable, loveable actually. The movie doesn't rely on gimmicks, plot twists, over explanation, or over acting. It just slowly unfolds in this wonderful, honest, understated drama that will leave you smiling at the end, full of love for your fellow man and your friend who recommended it to you.
Tuesday, October 17, 2006
Saved by Grace
The youth pastor of our old church in KC had a gift for designing really great t-shirts and logos. One of my favorites was a black t-shirt that said Naughty by Nature in small white letters on the front and Saved by Grace on the back. It was one of those fits-just-right shirts that I ended up wearing so much that Jen called it my uniform. One day as I passed a coworker he took a look at the shirt and called out, "Grace...is that the name of your wife?"
Never have truer words been spoken. Jen has truly been a salvation, saving me from myself time and time again. Like a dam channels and makes useful a wild untamed river, so is Jen to me.
I live with my head lost in the clouds about 90% of the time so it would be really easy to have this blog be a boring exercize in belly gazing narcissism. Actually, that was my plan. I wanted a place to put my thoughts in black and white and maybe slowly invite 1 or 2 people to read them. That all changed when I checked our e-mail this morning I saw quite a few e-mails entitled RE:Blog. Sweet Jimmy, Woman! Sooooo.... although I will be writing about things that excite and interest me I would like this blog to be primarily about other people. If you have a blog send me the address and I'll link it on my site. For some reason I'm having a hard time linking to Mac sites but I'm working on that. I had actually been planning on writing today's blog about Jen and perhaps that's why she wanted all the witnesses.
Chaco, mi sweet Chaco
I first saw Jen in the spring of 1988 in a small 2x3 photo on a page filled with pictures of the teenagers we would be going to Kenya with that summer. They say that people with goals succeed and those without goals fail, so I quickly made it my goal to make out with her sometime that summer. Some people go on mission trips to help people in distant lands, I went on mission trips to make out with chicks in distant lands. Although we never did kiss that summer, she caught me hook line and sinker. Over the next 8 years we wrote, visited, ran up enormous phone bills, crossed wires, stopped writing, stopped calling, went out with others, couldn't forget each other, started writing and calling again and eventually completey smitten, I moved up to Minnesota and we got married a year later. Jen is a realy hard person to forget, she gets under your skin and before you know it she's there for life.
The first thing that gets you is her gorgeous face; big expressive brown eyes that seem to be lit from within, a disarming smile full of perfectly aligned bright white teeth and all those cute little freckles. As if that weren't enough throw in her strong jaw line, dimples and a never ending procession of the cutest haircuts and we are talking about one hot i-talian mama! And she is so versatile, she has so many looks depending on time of day, hairstyle, makeup, lighting, etc that it is like being married to five women at one time. The beauty I have seen in her face has been burned into my mind in a thousand little snapshots that would be sufficient to sustain me for a lifetime were I to go blind. The world is full of beautiful women but there is only one whose face I cannot forget.
Jen has this gift of disarming me when I am full of fury and attacking her with my verbal six shooters. I can rant and rave and she can respond as if I had just asked her to pass the butter. In the face of such grace it is hard to stay angry for long. I have never figured out how she does this and I have never managed to return the favor, but she keeps at it after all these years. She also has this rare gift of keeping me grounded when I get to big for my britches. "Hey Mr. Full of Yourself, you're not as hot as you think", she can say in the kindest and funniest of ways that usually ends up with both of us laughing.
Jen is unmistakably feminine but she is not girlie and I love that about her. Growing up with 3 brothers and very few female relatives (love ya Julie!) left me pretty clueless about how women operate. If Jen were any daintier I probably would have bulldozed right over her and we would have both been the worse off for it. She can hang with the best and roughest of em and dish it out too.
Jen is old fashioned in all the right ways too, she'll sit with me on the front porch in the dark and listen to the night noises, she'd much rather play cards than watch tv, and she bakes bread. Let me say that again, she bakes bread! In fact there is nothing Jen cannot bake or cook. I keep waiting for the day she plants a vineyard and starts making wine. It's terrible, but I get this smug pride walking down the grocery store aisles, spaghetti sauce...puhleeazze my wife makes that; cookies, no thanks Keebler, my wife will make them; store bought bread?, I wouldn't feed that crap to the the birds. It's horrible, I'm an elitist! People who are over the top and obsessively committed to excellence in their particular field or hobby get two enthusiastic thumbs up from me. Jen is such a person when it comes to the kitchen. There is no method too difficult, no act too time consuming, no amount of sacrifice too much to get things just right. I love it!
Although there are times she can drive me right up to the brink of insanity, she always has the right touch and knows when to back off, when to throw in a joke, or when it's best to just look cute. Jen can walk into a grocery store and stop right in front of the entrance and look around in a state of confusion as if she had just landed on Mars while shoppers pile up in a bottleneck behind her, but she moves about my life with a deftness and grace that keeps me coming back for more.
Never have truer words been spoken. Jen has truly been a salvation, saving me from myself time and time again. Like a dam channels and makes useful a wild untamed river, so is Jen to me.
I live with my head lost in the clouds about 90% of the time so it would be really easy to have this blog be a boring exercize in belly gazing narcissism. Actually, that was my plan. I wanted a place to put my thoughts in black and white and maybe slowly invite 1 or 2 people to read them. That all changed when I checked our e-mail this morning I saw quite a few e-mails entitled RE:Blog. Sweet Jimmy, Woman! Sooooo.... although I will be writing about things that excite and interest me I would like this blog to be primarily about other people. If you have a blog send me the address and I'll link it on my site. For some reason I'm having a hard time linking to Mac sites but I'm working on that. I had actually been planning on writing today's blog about Jen and perhaps that's why she wanted all the witnesses.
Chaco, mi sweet Chaco
I first saw Jen in the spring of 1988 in a small 2x3 photo on a page filled with pictures of the teenagers we would be going to Kenya with that summer. They say that people with goals succeed and those without goals fail, so I quickly made it my goal to make out with her sometime that summer. Some people go on mission trips to help people in distant lands, I went on mission trips to make out with chicks in distant lands. Although we never did kiss that summer, she caught me hook line and sinker. Over the next 8 years we wrote, visited, ran up enormous phone bills, crossed wires, stopped writing, stopped calling, went out with others, couldn't forget each other, started writing and calling again and eventually completey smitten, I moved up to Minnesota and we got married a year later. Jen is a realy hard person to forget, she gets under your skin and before you know it she's there for life.
The first thing that gets you is her gorgeous face; big expressive brown eyes that seem to be lit from within, a disarming smile full of perfectly aligned bright white teeth and all those cute little freckles. As if that weren't enough throw in her strong jaw line, dimples and a never ending procession of the cutest haircuts and we are talking about one hot i-talian mama! And she is so versatile, she has so many looks depending on time of day, hairstyle, makeup, lighting, etc that it is like being married to five women at one time. The beauty I have seen in her face has been burned into my mind in a thousand little snapshots that would be sufficient to sustain me for a lifetime were I to go blind. The world is full of beautiful women but there is only one whose face I cannot forget.
Jen has this gift of disarming me when I am full of fury and attacking her with my verbal six shooters. I can rant and rave and she can respond as if I had just asked her to pass the butter. In the face of such grace it is hard to stay angry for long. I have never figured out how she does this and I have never managed to return the favor, but she keeps at it after all these years. She also has this rare gift of keeping me grounded when I get to big for my britches. "Hey Mr. Full of Yourself, you're not as hot as you think", she can say in the kindest and funniest of ways that usually ends up with both of us laughing.
Jen is unmistakably feminine but she is not girlie and I love that about her. Growing up with 3 brothers and very few female relatives (love ya Julie!) left me pretty clueless about how women operate. If Jen were any daintier I probably would have bulldozed right over her and we would have both been the worse off for it. She can hang with the best and roughest of em and dish it out too.
Jen is old fashioned in all the right ways too, she'll sit with me on the front porch in the dark and listen to the night noises, she'd much rather play cards than watch tv, and she bakes bread. Let me say that again, she bakes bread! In fact there is nothing Jen cannot bake or cook. I keep waiting for the day she plants a vineyard and starts making wine. It's terrible, but I get this smug pride walking down the grocery store aisles, spaghetti sauce...puhleeazze my wife makes that; cookies, no thanks Keebler, my wife will make them; store bought bread?, I wouldn't feed that crap to the the birds. It's horrible, I'm an elitist! People who are over the top and obsessively committed to excellence in their particular field or hobby get two enthusiastic thumbs up from me. Jen is such a person when it comes to the kitchen. There is no method too difficult, no act too time consuming, no amount of sacrifice too much to get things just right. I love it!
Although there are times she can drive me right up to the brink of insanity, she always has the right touch and knows when to back off, when to throw in a joke, or when it's best to just look cute. Jen can walk into a grocery store and stop right in front of the entrance and look around in a state of confusion as if she had just landed on Mars while shoppers pile up in a bottleneck behind her, but she moves about my life with a deftness and grace that keeps me coming back for more.
Sunday, October 15, 2006
A Few of My Favorite Things: Sounds
- The slap of a wooden screen door slamming shut, (preceded by the high pitched screee of the spring)
- An oscillating fan as it makes it's rounds
- The crunch of a gravel driveway under a car's tires
- The sound of a glass bottle being opened followed by the cap bouncing across the counter
- The roar and rythym of a freight train passing
- A lamp being turned on or off
- An oar moving through the water
- The beating wings of an otherwise silent bird, startled in the woods
- A coffee pot sucking up the last of the water as it brews coffee
- A lone hockey player's ice skates on the ice in an empty arena
- The sound a dishwasher makes when the water hits the front panel during the wash cycle and also the sound it makes when it switches cycles and begins draining the water into the sink
- The cry of seagulls
- The sound of the lever on the gas tank being flipped followed by the sound of the nozzle as it is inserted into your gas tank (especially satisfying when heard from inside the car on an exceptionally cold night)
- A church bell announcing the hour
- The sound of the oven door being opened and something being placed on the rack (especially when heard in surprise from another part of the house)
- The deep concussive bass of heavy surf pounding the beach
- An old wooden floor creaking as you walk or shift your weight
- A match being struck
- A canoe running up onto a gravel beach
- Zippers on a backpack being compulsively zipped opened and shut in the pre dawn darkness before a hike or an airline flight (this noise quietly announces, "despite the darkness, and my inability to speak this early in the morning, nothing has been overlooked or forgotten, ...we will succeed")
- The barely audible tisk tisk sound that falling snow makes when it hits your jacket
Friday, October 13, 2006
A Cure for Wanderlust?
The crew just got back from a week of work out in West Texas and New Mexico. We had a great time out there, surrounded by and working in the mountains. The views were breathtaking and put all of us in a mild state of ecstasy that took the edge off of the 15 hour days. I got out there half a day early and was able to run around in the Sacramento Mountains for a little bit before heading down into the valley to hike in White Sands National Park in the early evening. The entire trip floored me but the first day was by far the highlight.
When I was a teenager I absolutely could not comprehend why anyone would choose to live more than 20 miles from the beach. I can remember making a list ranking all 50 states according to how I perceived their worth. New Jersey, where I grew up was #1 followed by Florida, California, Hawaii, and Massachussets. I don't remember where I had New Mexico ranked but I know it was in the bottom five, with most of the rest of the non-coastal West filling out the bottom half. I can remember my Dad laughing and shaking his head as he read my list. "But they don't have beaches", I protested. Youth is, as they say, indeed wasted on the young. What I wouldn't give to be able to put my current brain in my 18 year old body. I would have taken the road trip of a lifetime, and with the exception of what was needed to get out of the state, none of it would have included New Jersey.
White Sands sits in a flat desert valley surrounded by mountains to the East, North and West. It is a large deposit of white sand that is constantly being sculpted by the elements and at dusk, when I was there, it is essentially a giant white canvas upon which the deteriorating light lays an evolving work of shadow and muted pastels. It is also a place where you can leave the only visible footprints or sign of man and get far enough away that it is so quiet that all you hear is the ringing in your ears (which actually was very loud, having just driven 500+ miles with the window down and the stereo cranked). To add to the scenery, thunderheads were building over the mountains on all 3 sides and the light played off the ones in the East and peeked in and out of the ones in the West like a bank of spotlights at a rock show. I was forced to walk forward in circles just to take it all in and by the time my head made it 360 degrees around the view in front of me had changed again. I felt as if I were walking on holy ground.
As I walked through the sand I suddenly wanted to see it in every possible situation, what does it look like at sunrise, at high noon, in the dead of winter, on a cloudy day, in the rain, in the snow, with a red sunset, with a pink sunset, in the middle of the night? I didn't just want to see this place, I wanted to know it. I wanted to set up in a lawn chair with a year's supply of grilled cheese and Dr. Pepper and do nothing but watch the seasons come and go from every possible angle until I had fully experienced the place. But unfortunately, I had work to do and I don't think I could get the kids to sit still for that long. Old age I thought wistfully, is wasted on the old.
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