What you seek is really out there...
Glen Lewis
I have been going to Gallup for years for nearby mapping work. The pilots absolutely dislike the place but I have ventured out beyond the mundane. To do this one must cross a barbed wire fence, a weedy field, a double railroad track built on precarious rock bedding, another barbed wire fence and another field split by I-40 where I go under a bridge over a drainage which I find a bit spooky and one more fence. Things start to open up after that with strange bluffs cut by interesting canyons. You sometimes come upon natural coal seams exposed by erosion. Once I found a real old coal operations complete with old fallen down buildings, remnants of rail track and an old dump with all manner of antique colored glass.
Last week it was once more into the high cedar-studded deserts where those stunted wind tortured trees are crown jewels in a wonderful landscape that is always my own. I have never once seen a soul out in these places which were once inhabited by an ancient race of stone age people.
The sandstone has sculpted shapes that will appear if you venture out among them. Different layers of different durability form shapes that are both pleasing and enigmatic.
These visions never cease to amaze me. I wander for hours that seem like mere minutes. Observations of one moment are blotted out by revelations of the next. Insight seems to be so near yet as I reach out it is fleeting; however I am an integral part somehow no more important than the next element.
As is the usual, I lose the perspective of the immense “overall” but know I do belong here. Then it focuses more clearly but not to last, like the ancient observation of “through a glass darkly.” I am so addicted to these feelings.
So what I am trying to impart in this short mostly unhinged line of thought is: Even if you see apparently nothing as far as the horizon, you have simply not walked out into it far enough to leave those obstacles of thought behind. Go………
©2004 Glen Lewis