Camped out at Mexican Mountain, the skies were full of blue, and empty of contrails. The brief interruptions from your former self were replaced with the solitary down-beats of a passing corvid (probably eyeing that vegan pad thai you had prepared for dinner) and the occasional rockfall echoing through the canyons. The landscape appeared void of life, but the observant eye caught glimpses of the day-to-day proceedings of your temporary neighbors, where black and blue spider wasps (or whatever they were) would throw sand into the air while striking it rich in the underground caterpillar market. Or catching the male mountain bluebirds as they cat-call their potential mates, while the already spoken for females work gathering the necessities to start the homebuilding process. The true adventure lay within the details…the details which required an above-average attention.
Waiting for weather to clear, the common man may have glanced through this lens and seen the rain and ran inside for cover. The day is ruined, after all. Schedules lost as the adventurous spirit fought to maintain its place in the hearts of man. The lack of the Verizon LTE network (or halfway decent airport lounge WiFi) hindered the timesuck vacuum of the rectangle you’re holding while reading these words. The cold winds and colorful skies were favored over the musty couches and the hum of the refrigerator.
Then I remembered the birds, the bugs, the rockfalls. The echoes through the canyon walls. The rocks that littered the game trails through the serene landscapes. The rain, the storms did hinder our progress. But revealed to me the “a-ha” moment I was yearning for. Time. Slowly watching the rain dance from the heavens reminded me of the dark nights over the Atlantic staring into the cosmos watching the ionized oxygen particles sway to the solar winds. The colors themselves are not important. The once-over glance of the skies are not where true beauty, truth, and life are found. It is in the observation of these things with respect to time.
My 401k might be falling down, but my heart and my soul have never been so full. There will always be the dark skies, the rumors of more weather ahead, or the bleak stares into the supposed emptiness ahead. But those are short-sighted observations. My focus will henceforth be on the long game. And, when you look back on those long-spent observations a-la a time lapse, you’ll see the beauty in the struggle.