As a preface, I may be losing my grips on reality, but I don’t think I mind.
Today, I drove over an hour in the wrong direction because Laura and Rod Jones of Almo, Idaho drove up to my car in the middle of a field on their dirt bikes and told me I should. They said I needed to go and see the “City of Rocks” which to their credibility is a National Reserve. They also said I should not sleep out there all alone and offered me a spot in their driveway and a shower. I said I would take them up on the City of Rocks as a compromise for making them worry.
This morning, I woke up, got dressed, brushed my teeth and just started driving. The City of Rocks is not like a monument or a park, but just land. Breath-taking land. I believe it is granite deposits, but that is really not my field. What I can say is that these formations looked like they had simultaneously fallen from the sky and erupted from the earth. A jagged mess of organized striations patterned the landscape in a way that felt other-wordly. I took pictures, but don’t think they do it justice. These rocks made me feel the same way that the trees do. Small. Yet, I am just the right size to experience their gargantuan shadows as the sun was still rising. On top of every ledge that faced the sky, there was lichen or sage brush or something living. A reminder that this moment has been a long time coming. It is so easy to feel meaningless in the face of something that was here before us and will be unchanged when we are gone, but this is not what I felt. As I drove through the City of Rocks I felt that as much as it was their job to withstand time, it was my job to not miss this. It was my job to slow down and look.
As I started on my planned route to make it to Wyoming, I may have left a part of myself with the granite giants. The hands on the wheel were certainly hands, but not certainly mine. I felt the entire drive like I was floating slightly tilted to the horizon, but nevertheless was always within my lane.
When I got to the top of the mesa, I started to laugh and then cry. Whispering to myself, “ It’s so beautiful” as my tears got smattered across my face by the wind, like raindrops on the roof of my car.
Tonight, I will look, so that tomorrow I won’t have missed it.
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