Spring Break
We are driving south on highway 17, just off Interstate 10, and the landscape has changed – the worn white limestone buttes have given way first to a pancake flat plain and then suddenly to rusty blackrock hills. You’ve just woken up and requested an end to my introspective lone-guitar music (Calexico, Cat Power), so I’ve returned to our library books on tape. “Did you know,” I say, “that these rocks are black instead of white because they’re made of ancient volcanoes?” You want to know where the volcanoes are and if we can see one, and if the rocks are still a little hot, like hot lava. I tell you the volcanoes are gone, and that they were active even before the dinosaurs. And, because I am feeling like I know something, I then point out the line of cottonwoods to our left. “And do you see those trees? Why do you suppose they’re all in a line like that? And green when everything else is brown?” You make some guesses which are all good and then I say that it’s because they grown where water is. This seems like the stupidest and most obvious thing to be telling you, but then I don’t really know what I know, and what I can teach you. I want you to know how to read the land, to know the sky, to recognize the patterns in things. It’s different from reading a book that keys things into classes and taxa. Anyone can do this, anyone can there’s no trick to it and that’s why I know I’m of little use. Anyone can, but almost no one ever does. And you don’t need to really. You just need a phone and wireless and google to know anything. But those just give you the pieces to a puzzle you’ll never see. The patterns hold something different, something bigger. If you get them you’ll put together puzzle after puzzle because you’ll see what they are even before the first piece hits your hand. That’s what I think I know, something about looking.
Little Bug 