Monument Valley              Click to enlarge

For some of you it still feels like Winter, I know it and I feel your pain, but believe it or not there are places in our world, right now, where the sun is shining and you can go outside without long underwear, excuse me, they call it base layers now, and not freeze your fuon buey bueys off.

In fact the other day as I was lying on the couch in a carbohydrate-induced coma, I felt something warm and comfortable slide across my face, no it wasn’t the dog’s tongue, I’m out of dogs at the present, it was sunshine. Yes, sunshine. Well I was surprised I can tell you. I immediately jumped up, well, to be more accurate, rolled off the couch and crawled to the window to see if it was real.

It was and what’s more the snow that had been steadily climbing up the side of the house covering the windows and burying my car, had disappeared. You could see the ground. But the biggest miracle was that the lucky Aspen tree, the one we call Dead Tree Walking, the one that is still alive after all the attempts were made by the elements to kill it, had buds on it. Big ones too, like they were going to open tomorrow kind of big. How’s that for giving one hope?

I could feel the blood starting to move slowly and sluggishly around in my body, pressing up against the various valves in my veins, saying “open up, open up we need to get to the brain, we’re about to lose this guy!” and they did, those little valves, they opened and soon the flood gates were down and I was walking and talking and going outside and looking around, staring at the sun like some peyote-crazed Aztec. I marveled at the fact that white was not the dominant color anymore, that I hadn’t been trans-located to some black & white movie, set in Croatia or somewhere worse, like 1950’s Czechoslovakia, you know, all coal-fired steam trains, cold dark fog, grey with soot everywhere, all filmed 20 minutes after the sun went down.

As the sun warmed my head little thoughts started to dart around in my mind like those minnows you see at the edge of the shore, you remember, the ones that flit from one shadow to another at the speed of light, not staying in the sunshine for one moment longer than they need to, lest something bigger make a meal of them. Then bigger thoughts arrived, then bigger yet, edging into my imagination like the berthing of the Queen Mary. Huge ponderous thoughts like I used to have before Winter caught me and turned me into a couch dwelling, TV watching, soulless lump, nearly one of the undead but not quite.

One of the biggest thoughts coming up out of the murky depths, brought to the surface by the slow turning of the great props as the Queen of the Sea was slowly  brought dockside was ” I could go somewhere.”  yeah seems obvious to you I bet, but it was a revelation to me. I thought I was going to die on that couch. Never seeing the beauties of the world again. Alone, staring at the ice encrusted windows as the world turned slowly grey then black. So you can see how a guy would suddenly be GobSmacked, his life returned to him in an instant, full of hope and joy with the idea that there was a future.

Where to go though. I quickly ran to my computer and began feverishly going through the images I had placed in the folder labeled, “Places I want to go again if I live through this Winter” and up popped this image of one of my favorite places in the universe, Monument valley. It is early morning, the sun just rising high enough to clear the buttes, lighting my way to a secret place deep in the desert where no one has ever taken a picture before. The wind making a keening sound as it rounded the spires and towers as it finishes writing its name in the sand….. Listen I’d write more but I have to go pack the car. I got to go before Winter changes its mind.