Quote of the Day - 2/21/2012

The very air here is miraculous, the outlines of reality change with the moment.  The sky sucks up the land and disgorges it.  A dream hangs over the whole region, a brooding kind of hallucination. – John Steinbeck, 1941 as quoted in John Annerino in Canyons of the Southwest: A Tour of the Great Canyon Country from Colorado to Northern Mexico

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I’m remembering vacations in the southwest…both the visual and the warmth…while I am in Maryland with the outdoor temperature in the 20s and the trees still leafless.

The Steinbeck quote evokes the place quite well.

Maybe in all places ‘the outlines of reality change with the moment’ but it is easier to see in the canyons with the ratio of rock to vegetation so high. The shadows have more significance. Consider that ‘the moment’ may be elastic rather than finite time element depending on perspective. What is a moment in the geologic timeline of a canyon?

And the sky. I am drawn to the southwest by the sky as much as anything else. The daytime blue seems so pure…the sunlight so bright. The light bleaches during mid-day or adds golden color in the morning or evening - changing the scenes. The nights are not so polluted with light that the stars blink out. Does just about everyone spend more time looking at the night sky in the Southwest?