Memorial Day, May 30, 2016

Sitting in a camp chair by Kerry and listening to that bird that sounds like an owl, but isn’t. Tried to convince the dogs to eat and drink but to no avail. Kapu is too busy protecting us from stuff, and Luna is too busy worrying about him and her sofas and this daily change of scenery. We had a good day. Landed last night in Green River at a Passport America campground, A/ok RV park. Nothing fancy but a pull thru site which is always a plus. The air is breezy enough to make it cool and the bugs don’t like this dry climate much.

Today we drove down to Moab, Utah and visited the Canyonlands National Park at Needles. That would have been worth the trip… and if you are ever near road 191 in Utah, you should drive on it… well below the speed limit. We also visited Arches National Park, which was way more crowded with tourists (like us) but Kerry managed to find a few spots for pictures and we can’t walk any of the trails with the dogs anyway. (They are not yet ready to stay alone in our tiny house of sofas. We are weaning them of our presence by going together to the bathhouse, etc. They were fine in the bigger one, but I think they feel less insulated in this one… which they are. Kapu can hear way too much of what is going on.) Even without walking the trails, it was a great trip. It feels like visiting ancient ruins in the middle of a Star Wars movie. You just know some of those structures are going to get up and start moving. It is so alien to the landscape of the East.

We also found a dog-friendly patio to have lunch while we waited on an email, a very important email. The one containing the contract on our house. Hopefully, this one will make it to the end. It was a much straight-forward contract and they are prequalified for way more than our house. So… not going to publish my song yet, but our hopes are high.

We left gypsum and traveled through some of the most amazing landscape I’ve ever seen from an interstate. How have we missed Interstate 70 in all our trips out West? I want to go back again and again because once is not enough to appreciate it. I really can’t describe it in adjectives. Even my “history” phone photos are beautiful, and Kerry’s are fantastic, but a photograph just does not do it justice.

I have been thinking about the newness of these mountains. It’s like the West is a nursery and the East is a retirement center. There are the really newbies, smooth red with erosive loss of dirt and rock making them look like a set of ancient ruins. And then there are the toddlers, who have been shedding rock and soil to provide for the green fuzz of growth that holds the earth in place. Then you have the children mountains, with tufts of bush and plants and sometimes even flowers that are showing some of the signs of the green wealth that will someday be of Appalachian strength.

That all of this could happen in 10 to 12 thousand years is more than I can believe. It’s hard for me to understand how others can. But that certainly doesn’t mean that I think all of this is not the work of the Creator. If man is made in God’s image then we should be able to tell something about God from what we know about man. Whether it is a song, or sculptor, or canvas, I have never seen the creative process as a zap. It may come in spurts for some or take years for others. But zaps, I have not known.

Matt’s mother and I were talking about creative energy, and she obviously gets hers from others as she feels Matt does. I think both Kerry and I get ours from solitude. Shosha has always seemed a mixture. But most creativity comes with time, either way. I can’t help but think something as wondrous as our world took time, especially when you can see what a wonderful process is still going on. The resilience of wysteria is a testament to that, possibly the most beautiful weed I know.

But I regress. Mostly I’m just overwhelmed by the beauty and diversity we have been living and also just overwhelmed by this opportunity to experience it. Every day is a joy.