The sun is setting, and its amazing how much chillier it is getting in the building where I am. The warm radiant blanket begins to slip away under the horizon. It makes the mountains in the distance clearer though, as the particulates no longer have to reflect as much of the rays as they go beneath the land.
This is a place. A place full of rain, and green, one with snow capped mountains, and quirky settlements.
The places you visit in your lifetime are worth thousands of words. But not nearly enough to satisfy the urge to see more. There is something beautiful in every place. Something to be appreciated, sought out and acknowledged, even in the "worst" of cases.
A mountain top removal mine shows our amazing ability to manipulate our environment and technology to adapt. A natural preserve shows our respect for what exists, and our desire to keep some part of the world stable in the ever changing landscape. Deserts may look empty, but under all that dust and shrub lie an entire ecosystem of plants, animals and microbes. Yet the very basis of forests rest upon the solid yet ever changing rock, only a recollection of ages past long ago.
There are infinite places. Geography dictates that something is a part of something else, until you get to the elementary particles and the outer limits of the observable universe. Yet even those are made of "things", even if it is only colorful descriptors and the hypothetical unknowns.
Yet, I always long for the base. For those rolling hills of the heartland, ripe with crops and a sky horizon so great that it beckons you onward. That indescribable patchwork of farms, forests, and houses. The iconic Americana picture. Flags lining a street of a small town with no stoplights. Kids playing out and about in the yards, as the tractors roll through digging the fertile earth. There is no place like it.
Then there are the people you love in those places too. Some of them you get sick of being around, but you love them none the less. And some of your best friends, they hail from those mountains and fields as well. And you can't get it out of your mind the time you went back for Christmas, and how that made you realize how much you missed the place where you grew up, and the place where your loved ones resided.
How I miss that landscape so. The adventures, the craziness, the great times. It's amazing how strong this urge can be sometimes.
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