Perhaps leaving for work an extra half hour--or even whole hour--earlier than usual is not a foreign concept to you; but to me, who cherishes all the time spent in the cradle of a quiet house, and in the fuzzy company of her amiable dog, to leave any earlier than necessary is absurd. There is too much coffee to be drunk, too many books to be glanced at, and far too many things to be done or at least started before it's time to leave. Today I saw the error in this. I drove down East Smith Rd passing frosty fields and dark houses with curls of woodsmoke breaking the stillness above them, and though my car heater was doing its job I nestled into my jacket just a little more against the pressing grey cold of the morning sky. And as I topped the last hill before the Guide, a streak of white and gold struck the right side of my face and looking up I saw the mountains in Canada, bright, snow-capped, touched with brilliant sunshine yellow and reaching into a pale blue sky. This scene was a narrow stripe on the northern horizon framed by the grey-green earth close to me and the steel-grey sky pressing low all around, but it shown, like a Rembrandt or Maxfield Parrish shines from its frame as if by a light within itself. Perhaps it's the incongruity of a grey morning like this coexisting with a warm sun--even a sun burning behind the oppressive cloud ceiling--that made those peaks seem to radiate their own light rather than be lit from above. They didn't fit into the cold, dirty, hibernating world I was driving through. If the horizon had opened onto the vast Himalayas instead of the Cascades, it could not have seemed more serene or remote. For a few moments I was transported....

Now this is why an extra half hour would be useful. Driving west over that hill, trying not to cross into oncoming traffic as I turned my face northward to stare, I longed to pull off the road and gaze at the horizon, to be removed from work and responsibility and, heck, the "reality" that calls sights like that horizon "irreality". And so I think that making time in one's day in odd places that don't normally get extra time (like the drive to work) might allow REALity to step in where it will and be experienced as it will.

You might say even two minutes stopped by the road would be enough, and I could easily have spared that--I could easily have spared even 5, but they would not be enough to really experience that sight... it would take a solid 20 or perhaps 30 minutes to do that vision justice. And if a half hour is not to be had, it is better the fleeting glimpse that I got than a painfully inadequate 2 minute pause by the road which might only allow me time to feel the biting cold and the rush of passing cars.

wow.