dawn in the back 40

the night brought rain. windows open to the scent. the desert bursting. dawn awakened.

“Once in his life a man ought to concentrate his mind upon the remembered earth,

I believe.

He ought to give himself up to a particular landscape in his experience,

to look at it from as many angles as he can, to wonder about it, to dwell upon it. 

He ought to imagine that he touches it with his hands at every season

and listens to the sounds that are made upon it.

 

He ought to imagine the creatures there and all the faintest motions of the wind.

He ought to recollect the glare of noon and all the colors of the dawn and dusk.

For we are held by more than the force of gravity to the earth. 

It is the entity from which we are sprung, and that into which we are dissolved in time. 

 

The blood of the whole human race is invested in it. We are moored there,
rooted as surely, as deeply as are the ancient redwoods and bristlecones.”

N.Scott Momaday