*
I woke up with that smile.
I woke up with those dozen strange wisdoms.
I woke up with my eyes closed to the sights and sounds of Morey Plains, to the day after a night of rain, to a dream after a night of realities.
I kept my eyes shut. I was fearful that opening my eyes would release this unlimited comprehension I had gained in a single night. I don’t know what I had done to receive these insights, and I wasn’t going to let them slip from memory. I recalled the night.
An hour later, I stumbled out of the tent to find my friends running around the empty, stone-strewn, Martian landscape playing football with a ball they had made by cocooning a pebble inside a few dirty t- shirts. The laughter and the sounds of their boyish gameplay echoed from somber mountain to somber mountain, but drenched in their laughter they no longer looked somber. A great joy rose within me, the kind of joy that erupts from the beautiful satisfaction of a hard day’s work and a good night’s sleep. I got the feeling that I could see my friends from far away, tiny specks in an enormous valley. Four large stones acted as goal posts on each end, and they’d chosen, with or without intention I do not know, a place that was half land, half sand. It was a challenge to run and play and maneuver the already shapeless ball in the sands, so you had to gain momentum while on hard ground. I ran to join them, now two to each side, and we played the game and lost track of time until it became too hot to play. We returned to camp and spent the next two hours packing and preparing for the ride ahead.
It was dark before we began our ride out of Morey plains, and we began with apprehension. The journey back to Pang from the quagmire sands of Morey plains was conducted under the starlight symphony of the Milky Way. We could see her backbone stretch from horizon to horizon – a dark river of mystery separating two banks scattered with diamonds; what Carl Sagan describes as the ‘backbone of night’. Under this great awning we rode. While the heavens drank in the lights, the earth descended into darkness, and one could see, if one was far away and had the perspective, three beams of yellow light bobbing up and down the sea of sand, piercing the darkness. We undertook this journey with a patient measure, knowing we were out in the elements and out of our own. But we were also patient because nature was, and so were the grey, dim mountains in the distance, the bright-eyed stars, and the captivating galaxy. It is the least we can do but be spellbound by the sight of the Milky Way.
The light of a million suns fell upon our eyes and entered the fragile nature of our minds, vibrating us to the tune of some unheard song. It is hard not to wonder what conscious being looks back at our own sun in the night of its days, and looking thus, perhaps chances to glance at the Earth in the vicinity of the Sun. What is the possibility that two conscious beings, looking out at the vast emptiness of space scattered by pockets of spherical fire, have by sheer grace, glanced into each other’s eyes?
Closer to Earth, the sands approached and regularly threw us off our bikes. There is a fractured road that one uses to get out of Morey Plains, but we had lost it in the night, and were riding blind. Many times the sand swallowed us, and many times we had to get off the bikes to help each other. The forty kilometers through the plains to Pang took us over two hours, but they were two hours spent in the light of the galaxy. This was an unexpected gift, as all gifts are. There is something primitive in the witnessing of stars that root us again to the earth of our combined human nature. It takes us back to a more innocent time, when we would ponder the meaning of the night sky and those pin pricks of light. There is so much we know now that we cannot return to that past, except by imagination. But there is so much still we do not know, and so we will continue to be enraptured. Space and sky and stars will forever feed our imaginations, and keep us trapped in awe. And all of this is nature. Nature is the deep seductress. Nature is sex. Everything exists because of the coming together of two separate beings; because of the increasing absence of distance. And nature is everything. Nature conspires and collaborates with every element in her command to seduce us, to overpower us, to overwhelm us. The only thing a traveler can do is submit, succumb, and surrender. Can we ever fully fathom the magnificent calculations nature undertakes to reveal its splendid beauty to us? The diffraction of sunlight by the atmosphere that causes the blueness of the day sky; the thickness of the air that causes the susurrating blue-grey of distant mountains; the slow shredding of earth that causes mountains and hills, and the shapes of mountains and hills; the algorithms in the shapes of trees; the ebb and flow of waves caused by the ebb and flow of the moon. Can we ever really fathom how the Sun plays with a million tiny drops of rain from a hundred and fifty million miles away to splash that perfect arc of a rainbow on the screen of sky? What infinite mathematician sits down every day to draw these paintings?
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The Anatomy of Journey Page 41