On the Same Page?

Two things happened this morning. Two peripheral events doing there best to distract me from what I was trying to do. This image, from a while back, popped up on a feed on my screen. At the same time, I overheard the end of a friendly conversation in the cave next door. “Well, I’m glad we’re on the same page”, was the comment. The combination triggered a thought. This thought triggered many others; most of which fluttered off, never to be seen again. It is how my mind works. The tangle of surviving thoughts settled out to go something like this.

If you were on the same page as me, you would find it dog-eared, stained and creased. You would find it had been enjoyed, appreciated and pondered. You would probably also discover that it had never been fully read. Many of the paragraphs will have been started many times. You may even notice that the page isn’t in the same book it was when you first jumped on.

A memorable morning on a flooded Bonneville Salt Flats.

As for the picture? It took me a second to remember what I was looking at. This momentary memory laps was probably because this particular page in the landscape has been vastly different every time I’ve read it. This was a very memorable sunrise over the Bonneville Salt Flats in Southern Utah. During this reading, the vast salt flats were covered by a thin layer of water from recent rains and spring snow melt. Other times I’ve turned to this page, the alkaline surface has been dry and either perfectly flat or covered by its signature mosaic tiles. Light and weather change this story line dramatically and often. When taken on their own, and not compared to others, each version is amazing and memorable.

Most landscape photographers will agree that a place or ‘page’ in nature is best if it is visited many times. Each time you revisit the story becomes more meaningful. Plots, subplots and underlying twists and turns are added to the flow. The page becomes pages. Pages become chapters and chapters become volumes you can add to your own experiential library. If you are like me, they become places you can revisit just as successfully from you favorite couch corner as you can physically.

I think it is important to spend time on each page in our own personal library. Each page should be enjoyed, pondered and well written. We may have a general area we want a particular volume to end but there are many ways to get there. In any case the sun still rises, the sun still sets and the hero usually gets the girl or rides off into the sunset.

Note: If you ask my daughters, the heroine kicks butt, doesn’t have to end up with the guy and rides off to which ever future she decides is best.

Dappled