Tuesday, July 17, 2007

loose silt on the ocean floor...

... constantly upturned by a new presence or movement in the water. this has been my brain.

my thoughts are finally settling a little (i think). taking a road-trip has a distinct way of muddling every thought you attempt aside from the happenings of that very trip. i do not have many experiences with road-trips, but i did just return from one, so i feel qualified to generalize about such adventures. you are so caught up in what is happening, day after day cool experiences or beautiful scenery, that somehow you are not thinking as you normally do, but rather with a perspective custom-fit for this trip. changing locations every couple days or sometimes more frequently, it becomes so difficult to be realistic. so you resort to the wide-eyed, knowing that you are small in the scheme of such a huge landscape. this applies both to specific sights and also to a drive from coast to coast and the massive acreage in between, each inch possessing its own quality that separates it from the next.

furthermore, the trip was fun. i thought this one very often. one amazing thing after another, a blessing received from a host, an incredible sunset, a providential move of God.. day after day.

it is hard to be specific when it was 17 days of stuff. the sort of trip where the things that happened come out over time, but not told in succession. it is just too daunting a task. if i were to give that one thing that felt the best, the moment or series of moments equalling an experience... i have to say it was getting to surf 4th street beach in Del Mar (S.D.) at sunset one night. it was the kind of feeling you never plan to forget. you cannot. it is too brilliant. the red orb of the sun dropping off the face of the earth, working magic with the water stretching before you, after you have just come in from the best surf-session of your life, and it doesn't even matter that you are not good at surfing. it takes nothing from the feeling of standing there, shivering, but so warm despite it all. you never want it to end, but you know it will very soon, and you will be left to look back on the memory. but you are okay with that. I am okay with that, because it retains it vividness, as all special memories do.

i guess this is a taste of the journey, a journey with so many tastes that it is hard to avoid the conjoining of all of them together, where none of them retain their individual flavor. let's hope this is not imminent!

i took over 1000 pictures i think, so i will put some on the blog soon, and many many more on flickr. look for them.

5 comments:

Sienna said...

dan,
there were too many sentences I wanted to copy and paste here and to tell you how brilliantly you painted it all. this is beautiful. i was glued to the screen thinking I was the one surfing, you wrote it so vividely.

i get this part though. so much. and i love how you got it into words.

"...it becomes so difficult to be realistic. so you resort to the wide-eyed, knowing that you are small in the scheme of such a huge landscape."

wow.

D. Fresh said...

yeah sienna, i bet you were thinking that when you were atop the sea in norway!

Michael Kendall said...

ill uh, you know...umm see you this weekend.

Anonymous said...

Wow, Dan. Wow.
This was beautifully written. Your words really hit me. I'm still so sad that I didn't get to see you. Thanks for putting my calendar on the right month though. ;)

jeremy said...

Hey Dan, Jeremy weber here. This trip looks so great that you guys went on. I was looking at some of your pictures. I totally get what you mean by the difficulty in being realistic thing. I remember so many times, when I went to the Enchantments in WA state with some friends, when I got this feeling. Those mountains are just TOO big to fathom. Too big to take in. Ya can't. It's just too awesome..
cya later.