Landscapes

Sometimes landscapes are so inspiring they cause people to write poems, music, stories, to dance, to sing, or as in the case of Lucy, to freeze in place, and stare. In our daily walk the other morning Lucy and I turned the corner around the deep dusty green row of cedars lining the dirt road and headed west down our favorite dirt road of adventures. Within a few steps Lucy's body moved in front of mine, where upon she sat down blocking my path and without flinching an inch stared straight ahead at the changed landscape. Merely two hundred yards, or a tee shot away, stood a brown mountain of dirt in a normally winter wheat green field. Lucy sniffed the air for clues as to what monster was threatening us. Slowly, she began to inch forward stalking and sniffing the new threat (perhaps she thought it was a giant cow!). Charging forward still slinking sometimes nearly crawling on her belly, my protective dog vowed to keep me safe from the dirt mountain. At last we spied the yellow grader pushing the dirt. Then suddenly we felt the ground rattle and shake. I quickly put the lease on Lucy, and we stepped aside to duck from the blowing dust and rocks. We watched from the bar ditch as a giant yellow truck hauling dirt from the ditch digging project a mile to the east of us chugged by. From a distance the brown mountain grew and seemed to spew blue diesel smoke.

As we stood off to the side of the road for safety and to watch the mountain building process, I thought of an SRA reading kit story that I must have read in 5th grade, about a farmer in old Mexico who was tilling his land one day when the land moved, rattled furiously and a volcano was born. Now was that true or was a major highway being built and a mound of dirt just appeared, I don't know, but I prefer to think the poor farmer watched a volcano being born.

Standing, starring, pondering, imagining are all great activities for my soul. My mind crept back to the

Marana, Az desert views.

previous week when I had the opportunity to explore the desert around Tucson, Arizona. I began to wonder how Lucy would have responded to hike through the Suguaro National Forest, or other areas of the grand southwest desert. As I stood in awe of the grand grey green looming Suguaro's what would Lucy have seen? (to be continued)