Nature

I finally got out of Phoenix for a day. It's like I'm hung up here, wires around my ankles. But I took the car and the dog and headed north toward Flagstaff, where the temperature was in the 60's and clouds threatened thunderstorms. It was mostly bluster, hardly rained at all except on the way home.

I didn't even do much walking, just mostly looking and feeling. I took a side road into the national forest and walked around under ponderosa pines. I sat on a rock just enjoying the wind singing through the needles and a rumble of thunder from the west. Then, I continued on to I-40 and turned east five miles to Walnut Canyon. I've wondered for years what was there. I didn't have the stamina to face the walk down into the canyon and hundreds of steps back up again, so I just wandered along the short rim walk and gazed at the beauty of it, reading signs about its history way back to the Permian. The rocks at the bottom had curving seams at changing angles. I read that they once were sand dunes on the shores of an inland sea, compressed into rock by time and layers of sedimentation followed by uplift. The story added depth and significance to their beauty.

Gazing at natural beauty makes me feel happy and optimistic. I imagined myself shrinking my life for a year or years to fit into my car, wandering to all the beautiful places I have time to find before I die or feel the need for a stationary home again. This house and job have been my albatross. I'm laying it down.