Back home

So I am able to write...have been living in a tent for four days (with access to a bathhouse, a kitchen (but had my own camp stove), sauna, hot springs in various locations...and a photo catches my eye.

 

Along with another, taken in the same museum on the same day at the same hour...

And I wonder whether they represent the same experience....savoring a sense of beauty in the world. 

Morning

Crawled out of my tent while the stars were still out against the dark sky...came down to the reception office, made the first pot of coffee, set myself down at the table by the wide window that looks over the valley, and watched the earth rotate toward the sun.





The light spreads down from the peaks of the San Juans...these mountains are known locally as the Saguaghe range (from the Ute word for "sand dunes" which are located south of the hot springs). Light crosses the foothills and, then, hits the valley floor.





It takes about an hour for the sunlight to shine on the eastern slopes of the Sangre de Cristo, the Crestone range, where I sit at the table, drinking coffee and feeling the day slowly warm up.

Location:Valley View Hot Springs

Art along the road

N

Venturing beyond our east-west trajectory on I-80, we drove north toward Cleveland.  It was Day 10 of our road trip from Colorado to Maryland and back, taking out a trailer of Jose's belonging after he had spent a year in Denver.  His future lay in his past...going back to the communities he had lived in for the previous three decades.  After helping to get him and his family reestablished in the DC suburbs, we had spent some days with Charlotte's siblings and mine.  Now we were on our way back to the high plains and the Rocky Mountains.  Going home.

Yet time for art.   Cleveland Museum of Art...a 1916 classic building with a wrap-around addition that blends with its Greek temple facade.  

But it is the art inside that lends a sense of calm after the miles of interstate traffic...those stretches of grey concrete that ribbon across the Pennsylvania hills before hitting the soft plains of Ohio.  Inside its walls, the visitor shares space with objects and images that communicate ideas of the human condition and the worlds around.  

So many images...select a few to contemplate in the cool marble walls and terraces.  

Sometimes around a corner is a painting I recall from the art books my Dad kept.  The books lay flat on the bottom shelves of our bookcase.  I see them now again like an old friend who unexpectantly comes into view.  

Which could be what we see in art...at least in part...a place to contemplate our place in this world.