Where the World Once Joined

Cascades of orange and red floating over an ocean of calm. Window panes turned golden in reflection upon their mirrored surface. A sky turned into pink clouds of fluff that make your soul ache to lay your head upon them and just rest for a century or two. Mountains as old as time that beg you to remember the past while knowing they have never understood the true meaning of the present. Graveyards that ask you not to forget and to always remember.

An anchor sunken deep into the grassy lawn of a front yard. Lobster traps no longer sitting on the ocean floor, instead now laying on solid ground waiting patiently to one day be full again. Kids jumping and playing on a trampoline, their laughter filling the air with innocence and pure abandonment of worry. An inlet of water seperating where the world's crust once upon a time split apart and sailed away, seeking its own fortune in other lands. Feeling the warming roast of a woodstove burning silently into the night.

Even a moose outside my office window to greet me in the early morning.

All of this and more; the sights and sounds that fall before my eyes and ears in my first week back in my homeland again. What I have learned in that short amount of time is another story altogether. Here you go, and may you enjoy.

I am starting to feel the energy source here. It is like a light touch of fingers that forces my chin up from the ground in front of me, and beckons me to take in what surrounds my waking moments...what has forever been here and will be for an eternity after. I look around and see so many images that I can actually feel them burn into my memory, like the footprints I leave upon soft clay as I walk up a short trail, and then come upon the most peaceful sight I have ever laid my eyes on. I look back and see where I came from is only where my path now leads...forward, onward, and upward.

I am learning patience here, more so than I have ever learned in one sitting before. Time does not exist in this land of history, and if I squint real hard, I could imagine ancient tribes of natives gliding upon the ocean surface in their whaling boats of yore. If I stretch my imagination to heights of grandeur, I can almost see Vikings sailing the coast just off from where I sat today; can almost hear their songs of voyage and safe journey.

It is the sense of history that grabs me; the idea that these rocks and stones have been here for millions of years and yet are in no hurry to leave just quite yet. The repetition of integrity that is up to only us to ensure that we manage their land...that we manage not to let it slip away on the curtails of immediate gratification and selfish greed. As the ocean sifts and the soil sighs, we are reminded that we are but tiny remnants of sand in the large hourglass of time.

But it is what we do with that time that matters most. Do not let it slip away from you like sand falling through a clenched fist. Use your moments as they are meant to be used...time to make your image the lasting legacy you will one day leave behind.

I see it in the smiles of people I pass on the rustic side roads. I see it in their eyes and knowing nods of hospitality and offered friendship. I am home again, people, and in the end of it all, that is what really matters to me. That I came to see one of the ninth wonders of the world, and that it existed in a plane of time and space I could not even have imagined...and to think it was always here. Until we meet again, people, until we meet again.

"That man is the richest whose pleasures are the cheapest." - Henry David Thoreau