A Pretty Good Now

This post is from several years ago. It found it while searching for something else among my drafts, and decided to hit “save and publish”. Maybe someday soon we’ll go back to Utah and visit our good friend there.

Yesterday we hiked one of Zion's "less popular" trails, Wildcat Canyon Trail, a sandy stroll through pine forest, stream bed, and open meadow, with lava rock formations and views of white cliffs. I generally like loops more than out 'n backs, but this one was an out 'n back, although we made the wrong turn at a junction on the way back and ended up doing our own little cross-country detour loop as a result.

I was thinking about how easy it is to confuse what you cannot do with what you forgot you can do. I was thinking about how often I try to fill in silences and shouldn't, how long I believed that letting go of my sadness would be a kind of betrayal, and how very red is the Indian paintbrush here.

I was thinking about the many things I will never learn to do, all those boats that sailed without me, and that I am a boat misser, that's for sure, and yet I was a woman who was walking on The Wildcat Canyon Trail with two of the finest people I know, sometimes being quiet.

And I was thinking about how life is a loop, not an out'n back.

We three were young together once, and occasionally we reminisce, but Steve says he doesn't look back. What's the point? Those years are gone, and he's happier now than he's ever been before.

Besides, we aren't even the same people anymore...are we? (I have to admit we're not. My own journals often make me wince.) Anyway, it all went by so quickly. No one can possibly grasp in advance how whoosh-fast everything happens, so we can't even use the knowledge to forewarn others.

The only smart thing to do is appreciate this pretty-good now.