The Temporality Of Life
The dusty arid cliffs of Eastern Oregon rise from the land like monuments of the past. Each crag and crease are skeletons of mountains long vanished. Small pine trees stick out from the bone dry slopes, each green sliver pressed against the cloudless blue sky seems to cling precariously to life. Concurrently every tree works to renew life by shedding pine needles adding to a sparse layer of top soil that dusts the rock foundations like hairs on a balding man’s head. The enormity of the landscape seems to minimize my own presence as my eyes absorb the entirety of the vista stretching from one side of the horizon to the other. I feel so small. When you are young you want the years to pass, when you are old you want them to stop. There is something about age that makes you appreciate lost time. Perhaps it is because we know our life is finite and with each passing hour it marches toward a final curtain. I tend to think of my life in blocks. My son took twenty years to raise, twenty