utah sky

we stayed two days in the Beehive State. i was thankful, to myself, that the housing boom has ended: selfishly i am glad that here and there, meadows and horse pastures and haphazard houses remain, amongst the uniform housing developments. while the industry of bees is an admirable thing, isn't it lacking without the beauty of indolence and mere being, of flowers and clouds and other phenomena which are not born of industry? i was happy to think, as we drove past those scruffy patches of old Utah, that maybe the next time i come through these pastures and modest homes will still be here.

but regardless of all this: that sky can never be defeated. the Beehive State could pour every inch of land with concrete, and that sky would carry on triumphant, soaring above every paltry effort at civilization.


how many times have i arrived in Utah? dozens and dozens. why, then, was i stunned by the sky's grandeur as clouds collided with sun? it was as if i had just been born, not having seen any sky but that one. sara and i pointed the digital camera out the window of Suzanne's big car, impotent gestures of awe at the majestic ocean flowing and boiling above us.

this double reaction of mine points to the twin philosophies i hold: i resist, in my heart if nowhere else, the relentless consumption of nature for a few paltry pennies, for national power that evaporates in mere decades. but regardless of the result of these political struggles, i also am well aware of nature's infinite power, flowing on and on like the clouds above the Wasatch Range, power which submerges all our puny attempts at destruction.

but the destruction of even one iota of this majesty is still wrong. because, for one thing, we humans are that iota. when we rape nature we are not subjecting some foreign thing to our plans: no, we are ruining ourselves. and suicide must be resisted.