An image that has not been further back in my mind, these past few days, than three or four layers of distraction: I am alone in the Mojave. I cross the low north flank of Teutonia Peak, where a small canyon running toward the Valley View Ranch turns into a canyon large enough to hide in, and then to one large enough to get lost in. I enter it where it is perhaps eight feet deep and forty across. It is January and the desert is wet. The floor of the little canyon holds a small stripe of sand, a wash in miniature, the shaded parts of it not yet dried by the Mojave sun. I walk downcanyon a few hundred feet.
I come to a pool perhaps two feet across and two inches deep. I stand on the rock and am about to hop the pool when I look down.
There at my feet, in the wet sand of the little wash, are the tracks of a bighorn sheep. Each bears a thin sheen of water at its deepest points. Within five seconds the tracks are one quarter full of water. Then half. And full, and hair stands full erect on nape.
Spring rains blowing in the bamboo—I had the best time yesterday walking slowly around my neighborhood, in a light, surprisingly warm, drizzle, examining the tiny leaf sprouts on all the trees and shrubs. It was that one miraculous day when they first push through, feel the sun (post eclipse) and discover carbon dioxide and water. Drops holding ever so preciously to a tiny cluster, enable me to use them as lenses to see the new life emerging. Yeah!!! Spring is springing.
spyder, your comments are always a delight. I love the little lenses.
I found this Einstein quote in a David Orr essay this morning:
Albert Einstein once proposed that:
“A human being is part of a whole, called by us the universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest—a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”