A wise woman told me once to never lose my child-like wonder and fascination with life. Seven year old me took that advice quite seriously and I try to follow it with what ever is left of the child in my heart.
I have seen mountains. REAL mountains. I fully realize that this is something that I will at some point in the very near future not be so enamored with, which, in turn, leads me to feel that it is important for me to translate my immediate reaction to you ASAP before they become just another beautiful thing in this broken world.
I can honestly say that I have never felt a greater urge to put pen to paper and write what I was thinking and feeling. The tsunami of creativity that was whirling behind my eyes really took my breath away for a short moment. Metaphors flew through my head like comets, shining with clever description and burning across my train of thought. Shame they flew as fast as comets, leaving me the few that I can recall.
They are tremendously beautiful things, these mountains. And that's just viewing them from an airplane. I can only imagine what they look like from the ground. Coming from a land of rolling green hills and picturesque pastoral settings that make you want to buy an easel and paint for the rest of your life, I was taken aback by the pull they had on my heart. Mountains are a completely different breed of scenery. They make you want to breathe, to climb, to stretch. Screw painting, you cannot capture their soul on canvas. They make you their canvas, gracefully tearing their way across your line of sight.
It was also quite amazing to see bits and pieces of this giant country from my tiny window. Before today, the furthest west I had ever been was probably St. Louis. I had seen the eastern area of the country from a plane many times before. It was always beautiful, but very bland at the same time, as though our country was made up of right angles and squares like some giant quilt strewn across the land.
Wrong.
I just hadn't flown far enough!
This country still has some wild in it. You lose the structured city lines and gain the wide open curves of the plains. Even where there was clearly civilization the seamless welding of cookie cutter fields and chaotic wilderness was beautiful.
Color was everywhere, my graphic design brain went haywire labeling hues and sifting through fonts to use. ("A Love of Thunder" would have made a glorious title font. Just the tops of the letters peaking through the clouds.)
The Rockies took my breath away. The 20 minute glimpse of California? Im sold already. We didn't even leave the damn airport and I love San Francisco. That city jumped to my top 3 list of places to move with ridiculous speed. KFarm and I were particularly tickled with the wind farm we saw just before landing.
One person whom I thought of on our cross country flight was my grandfather. I am definitely his granddaughter as i have clearly inherited his love for travel. I miss him greatly, but I'm 99% positive that he's pretty proud of me right now.
Alight kids! Still on the plane from San Francisco to Auckland. I think I'll curl back up into my yoga ball and sleep for a few more hours. Australia here we come!
No comments:
Post a Comment