This morning, during my Monday morning run, as my feet hit the cold, muddy ground, I began to imagine myself transported to The Grand Canyon. I began to pack the biggest suitcase that I own full of high tech camping equipment-compact, high priced REI stuff that could become a campsite. Dream on girlie. There is a small stove, sleep pad, camping pots and pans, freeze-dried food and my wishes.
I ran on and pictured the plane touch down in Vegas and our rental car pulling out towards the road to The Grand Canyon. Jettisoned by my thoughts, bearing down on my tired legs from a 10 mile hike yesterday up Mt. St. Helena, I began to see the canyon walls as we walked down the Kaibab trail towards the bottom. Another planet, another time and place, I keep having these thoughts every day.
Get me out of here. I want out of this life right here. I ran up to the top of the dam where I can turn and see the front of the Mayacama's ridge where I always make a wish for a better life, a fuller life and imagine my idea of "God" sitting there and nodding at me. I imagined the peaks of the canyon, red and orange and mysterious. The history of our planet, the history of life hidden there and exposed like a jewel that beckons us downward just to catch the light and feel inconsequential. We are just that.
At some point in my run, I was there and not here in cold, northern California where real estate values are stalled along with good jobs. Things are stretched tight as we pay the bills with money at the beginning of the month hoping it will last until the end. Today, the horse barn where I volunteer said they might be looking for someone for two hours a week with pay to muck stalls, feed the horses, clean up regardless of weather. I said yes even though I thought it would only pay for dog food. Just the same, I know the people and I know the horses. Say yes to something I tell myself. Say yest and maybe my luck will change.
If there were a Grand Canyon Holodeck I would have been long gone by now and it wouldn't even take a suitcase. Beam me up Scotty, I need a geographic.
