My Dad is 82 Today!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, DAD! In real life, today my dad is eighty-two. I had a mini-little-goal for myself: to get today, Saturday, Jan. 15th to a spot in my blogging where I could be sharing these amazing photos from my recent southern Utah adventure, today -- in honor of my dad, the "rock" of our family, and his arrival to this planet. Planet Earth. Here we are. It's Jan. 15th. Take a look at the magnificence of this landscape. Take a look at this majesty. Behold the towering red-rock. Looking now, a month after I snapped these shots, they bring one word to my mind: "awe." What an amazing portion of creation. What a celebration of Eden. What an act of love, this sweeping vista. I was literally squeeling in the midst of taking these photos....pinching myself at my good fortune to have a mere hour before been leading a rousing, concluding chorus of Higgeldy, Biggeldy nonsense and with barely blinking I am then whisked away by gracious tour guides to see these other worldly towering sculptures. Pinch myself indeed. Happy Birthday, dad!

In somewhat the same way I feel when standing at the ocean's edge, watching wave-after-wave-after-wave caress the shore line, reeling from the infitine nature of this universe & my but-a-mere-grain-of-sand mentality perspective, I beheld these mountains: ridge-after-ridge-after-ridge pushing up toward the sky's edge, as though I am barely a speck-of-dust. Perspective. Infinity. Strength. Power. Awe. And back again to infinity, ricocheting pinball style once more to flashing eureka: AWE and I attempt to exhale. I vaguely realize that I took a college level geology class seemingly a lifetime ago and I long to have retained some tidbit of that textbook's explanation of this phenomena before my very eyes. My gracious tour guides attempt to give me their insight into water's receding over historic eons of time -- leaving the striated evidence of water levels in the rock themselves..... but I could only grasp a toddler's understanding of their words as I was somewhere between euphoria and awe, lapping up what I was seeing, unable to grasp --only to feel. Happy Birthday, dad!

Look closely to grasp the scale. Those are towering pine trees dwarfed by the mountain's edge. Wow. [How small the expression: wow. For the same amount of letters use the word: awe.] The snowfall was just enough of a cherry on top of the ultimate banana split -- to emphasize those ridges and add yet more decadence of icing layers heaping contrast to the glory of the rock at hand. I really did want to eat it all up. My camera the spoon. Happy Birthday, Dad!!!