Time Passages Present

It's been awhile since I ranted on here. The hacker has been caught and life is returning to a dull rumble once again. That is really nice.

I've been looking at connections to things. I've been thinking of how connected I am to the outdoors and how good I feel after a day of digging for rocks or just walking in the desert. It is a resting place for me; a refuge. I can dig for rocks until I am sunburned and not care how much time I'm out there or that the find might be small. It's better than a day at the office and much more fulfilling.

Getting the sand and clay under my nails and smearing it accidentally across my face, I realize how close I am to the sand and the stone and rocks. I sometimes lay down on the ground I've been mining and feel the cool moisture seep up into my jeans. Looking this close, I see things I would miss from even a foot or two away. So many patterns and re-creations of just bigger patterns....or is it that they begin small and expand out? Bits of rust and glass from a previous ghost town stare up at me trying to tell me their stories. What happened right here in this spot a hundred years ago? Was there a stable here or a saloon? Maybe it was a brothal and I am lying on my back looking up into the blue skies in a much beter situation that the girl before me.

Nevada is a cruel, harsh place to live. In this economy it is even more difficult than before. It takes a certain type of person to want to live far enough away from everyone else that you'd have to fart through a bull horn to get heard. There is no Macy's near my house. My town has a vet, a grocery store, a 7-11 and, oddly, 2 Chinese restaurants and three Mexican. We recently got a Walmart and a Lowe's...so we're really big time now. It could have stayed even smaller as far as I'm concerned. In a way it has. A lot of the hundreds of new homes that were built here either got damaged in the flood or they have been foreclosed on and left by the owners. Hundreds of empty houses in the once brilliant little new boomtown that started to get pretty snotty and high on it self.

Grandma always said there was always someone better/bigger than yourself. My town is learning to humble the hard way...not necessarily a bad lesson as far as myself and a lot of old times are concerned.

So we drive out to the desert, my husband and I. A few buckets, pick axes and picnic basket is in the car along with the sunscreen and bug repellant. Other than paying for the gas, we amuse ourselves with pieces of rock and the past for the price of investing our time. Dust deveils come to peek in every so often and stir things up, along with the occasional horney toad. Good company as the light begins to grow soft and pinky purple.