This post is a bit out of order, as a few are still germinating in the memory of my iPad. Regardless, I wanted to get it out in the open.

When I told friends of my trip to the Southwest, I often used the term vision quest. OK, poetic license is available to everyone right? The response was a little unexpected, though I guess not surprising given that I live in Boulder. “Dude, are you doing peyote?!” For the record, no. This morning, however, I did mix and consume an amazing concoction.

The brew consisted of an 8 mile run on the Fairyland Loop in Bryce Canyon. The effects hit faster than that of DMT. Though I started in one place, I was transported to a point on the map that was other-worldly. It was a place where I was greeted with towering hoodoos, barren soil, Bristlecone pines placed at the perfect distance from each other. A place where my presence was noticed by Red-tail hawks and Steller’s Jays. Where the elevated voices of a young couple “discussing” was out of place. Where the embracing smile of septuagenarians was the only sugar needed to fend off the approach of fatigue.

It was a place where the energy of all four dimensions vibrated in unison. Where pulse and wind dance to the same frequency. It was a place where time condensed into a laser, cut through everything external, ricocheted off my spine and emerged as the simple vision of landscape. And damn was it a trip.

I will leave you with words better able to catch the essence of time stopping. This is from Paul Gruchow’s The Necessity of Empty Places. “…a moment when time stops, when centuries fall away, and you briefly glimpse the glory of forever.”