Wide Open

Photo credit: Rhys Logan

“There had been a time when the world was full of blank spaces, and in which a man of imagination might be able to give free scope to his fancy. But…these spaces were rapidly being filled up; and the question was where the writer was to turn.”

-Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in honor of Robert Peary, May 1910

The expanse of the west nurtures room for my heart and mind to expand along with it-  to dream wildly, to imagine an epic adventure… There is a vastness, a bleakness to the horizon, that allows for every possibility.

I didn’t even know how crowded my mind had become until I looked upon the open sky. Every muscle in my body slowed under the Colorado blue. The air infused me with a fresh calm, a fresh rhythm. Breathing in and out…slowly taking on the wild, some part of that air staying with me, moving with me. With each breath I took on a bit more of that place, the calm and slow of my surroundings.

In the city I can start to assume that all the rooms have been filled- ideas squeezed tightly together into fine rows…categorized, turned over, already classified. I never cease to feel a part of something big here, a part of something so beyond myself…but the wide open leaves room for me to stand alone; and I had forgotten how necissary it is for my soul to wander and just be. 

How will you just be today?