A Brief Interlude

As time passes I find reflection a bit easier. Although some of what we’ve seen just doesn’t make sense. Coastline stretched out in front of us with fog coming in off the Pacific encircling giant Redwoods and Sequoias and rising like hot steam off the marshes and bogs that lead to the ocean.

The trees themselves are too big to adequately comprehend. Often, they are hollowed out and charred by fire. The breadth at the base of the Sequoias lures us to walk around them, but we lose track of where we began as we start to circle. The mountain, Rainier, is also shrouded in fog, but the fog is fused with cloud, dark and unassailable. But when the light breaks through and the mountain is exposed, even from the cusp of its glaciers the summit appears unreachable, an alien peak hoping to transcend this earth.

Equally unexplainable are Aaron’s new pants. How does something become so assaultingly pink?

These images simply pile up. The Colombia River, wide and fast, as it heads for the sea. Water coming down off mountains and shaping valleys and bending rock, as it has for millions of years. A nine-foot sturgeon. Mountains cut by glaciers.

All of these things are difficult to synthesize into anything slightly coherent, clearly defined, syllogistic terminology. I can’t – or maybe don’t want to – reduce what I’ve seen into some sort of didactic point; but seeing the world, especially somewhat removed from society (although this removal is indeed fabricated and surrounded by a different subset of society, a different rant altogether), helps me realize my place in it. I am small and insignificant in the wake of the world. Things are much bigger than I, almost senselessly so. However, this realization helps me contextualize my everyday life, mainly in humanistic terms. But this still needs some working out. And the road is calling. There are still more things ahead.