“A man on foot, on horseback or on a bicycle will see more, feel more, enjoy more in one mile than the motorized tourists can in a hundred miles.” ― Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire
I have a difficult time not being productive, not doing something that I can call an accomplishment. Simply being present and in the moment is something I wasn’t taught to do growing up. It seems to be antithetical to my very person, a complete waste of time. I mean, who wants to answer the question ‘what did you do today?’ with ‘nothing really’? But having ‘nothing’ as an agenda can sometimes make time irrelevant. At least this was my experience this past weekend as my wife and I visited Moab UT.
…who wants to answer the question ‘what did you do today?’ with ‘nothing really’?
We had purchased a small 2-person teardrop trailer in late January and were anxious to take it out on its’ maiden voyage. We chose Moab UT as our destination as it was fairly close and had the best chance of good weather for this time of year. I had a list of ‘sights to see’ within an hour’s drive of our destination. The first day we drove from one scenic wonder to another; drive, get out of the car, admire, get back in the car again … eager to devour all of the beauty we possibly could. Checking off all of the ‘sights to see’ on the list. The day went by quickly.
The second day was altogether different. We chose one place to simply explore. To be clear, it was a hiking trail, a prescribed path that goes from one ‘place’ to another ‘place’. But the goal was not a destination of ‘place’. It was more of a satisfying a curiosity of the place that we were in at the time. We found ourselves simply wandering around a wash, studying rock formations that were millions of years old. Pieces of those rocks, boulders, that had sheared off perhaps thousands of years ago. Old junipers that may have been a hundred years old and footprints in the sand that may have been made in the past couple of days.
‘Time’ was evidenced all around us, and yet I had no conscious experience of time passing while we wandered. There was much that captured my attention, that I chose to point my camera at. I was totally engrossed in the process of observing and recording my experiences. From the massive rock walls that were all around us, to patterns in the rocks beneath our feet, all of it was captivating.
I got back to the car and put my camera pack down, saw my tripod attached to my camera pack and thought ‘why didn’t I take the time to setup my tripod, slow down and be more intentional about the photographs I made?’. My first response was ‘it would have taken more time, and I was able to make more photographs without it’. Some habits are just plain hard to break.
