Rebecca Solnit, in her brilliantly beautiful book, A Field Guide to Getting Lost, muses around “the blue of distance”—the way the shorter wavelengths of blue light scatter on the edges of the horizon, in water, in the sky, giving whatever is far away a dreamy and melancholic blue haze. She recalls gazing back from Mt […]
Category: The Observation Deck
“We won’t stop. We won’t back down. We won’t be afraid.”
“Are you Emily?” There was a church service going on in the coffee shop where I was working. Church service was an aspirational name for the tiny, informal gathering. It was about 8 people doing their thing just around the corner from some comfy couches where I had settled in. The first thing I heard […]
Is it free-fall or flying?
It’s only the things around you that decide whether you are right side up or upside down. I remember visiting some caverns around the Grand Canyon, where deep under the earth, they turned off all the lights, leaving ultimate blackness, to help us understand how someone trapped down there would go crazy, losing track of […]
These geese are murderous assholes
On the far side of this pond, too tiny to see in this morning Montana mist, there sits a mated pair of Canada geese. They have been coming to this island each spring for years to have their babies. These geese are murderous assholes. Every year they arrive, settle in, build a nest, carefully […]
I think that is what makes him feel loved
I was lying in a naked tangle with an old friend recently, talking in hushed voices about the renters who live in the basement apartment of his enormous house, one of whom I had met a couple of hours earlier. “Wait, is that the same socially awkward, grumpy bachelor who has lived down there for […]
Someone made me a promise today
…and it felt good. It wasn’t a casual kind of drive-by “I promise”, but a sincere “I promise this to you” that carried the measured intent of follow through, even if it doesn’t turn out to be easy. It struck such a meaningful chord in me that I stopped and admired it – and felt […]