Cosmic Reflections

If one day we stand together at the Pine Creek trailhead, looking down the steep gravel slope, and think we see nothing….utterly nothing…but a desolate desert landscape,
we’ll head down that trail that will take us to remnants of yesterday’s Ice Age, slip on the gravel until we come to the smoother multi-colored layers of several of Earth yesterdays.
Whole eons slide under our feet in the grey dirt becoming brown becoming beige becoming yellow becoming red before becoming soft pink sand as the trail levels out.
A rare rain may make colors more vivid as we head across that arid landscape that was once a water fed habitat, detour to sniff the trunk of the Ponderosa Pine…vanilla, butterscotch?
As we pick our way across a seasonal stream on stones polished throughout yesterdays beyond comprehension, we’ll salute a thick stand of willow as it puts forth its fur once again.
We’ll pause to watch a hawk ride a thermal in circles. As this leftover dinosaur calls out, a small private airplane comes humming into view, and millions of yesterdays become one day.
A hollowed out tree hugs us, sending us forth into a tomorrow co-created by yesterday and today simultaneously, and we’re caught in a warp of time that leaves us breathless
as we scramble back up the steep slope of our own era, come up out of the desert that is anything but ‘deserted,’ its nothingness we now know is the beginning of everything.