Up in the early morning cold, in the car, heading towards orange juice. The sun was just breaking the mountain line. One half of the valley was a blueish-orange with the sun's rise and the opposite was a blueish-red with the disseminating moon tilting towards its west setting. The beauty of it all seems impossible.
Once the sun had risen enough to give the hills on the opposite side of the valley direct light then the western sky became blue almost in an instant and the hills turned dark red, rising towards pink, then back to brown, the day had arrived. All of it in less than 5 minutes. I swear to the ghost of Carl Sagan, it's all true.
If I hadn't been watching it with my own eyes then I wouldn't have believed it, or cared. I would have dismissed it as a normal reaction to sunlight crossing the most atmosphere of the day, and at its most dense, from my perspective. But no, it was more than that.
Life can be partially measured by the frequency of, and distance between, those type events in your life. The events that make you pull the car over and watch, or get out of the car and stand and stare. The richness of this valley makes it sometimes easier to measure life in something other than just days worked, months employed, years lived.
Though I do worry. Rachel was kind enough to tell me to go sleep in the spare bedroom last night. I slept like a two-toed cadaver sloth. I woke up after 6 hours of uninterrupted sleep and took over the world. I started my global domination bid by reading Wikipedia for about 45 minutes. My earthly coup culminated with falling back asleep while reading about Newt Gingrich, or George Harrison. I think.
Wikipedia can be very useful, as a sleep aid, especially in the mornings. It's too bad the little guy can't read yet.
Please click on this link and read Selavy's post from this morning. It is enviable writing. I have been doing far too much editorializing and opining, as I am wont to do, thinking myself clever, but nothing quite tells like a good story.
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