Passages, Small, Medium, and Large

“All things must pass,” as a once-young and alive man once sang.

The changes came one by one. On Monday I cracked 99K miles on my 2001 Jeep Wrangler. That I’m still under 100K miles for a vehicle I’ve owned for 17 years is a source of amusement to my son, who remembers me driving him to pre-school in it when we lived in Alaska. Later, in Colorado, he’d be driving it himself to Civil Air Patrol meetings, and then to work, before purchasing his own conveyance.

Despite the relatively low mileage, this Jeep and I have a lot of history together. We’re about to turn that corner, though. So I pulled over and took a picture. And then got right back on the road, because time isn’t stopping, and I, with any luck, still have miles to go before I sleep. Many, many more miles.

Yeah, she’s long overdue for a detailing. Weather’s warmer now, so there’s no excuse.

Tuesday is when the sandhill cranes left. Most of them, that is, I was surprised to see one large flock heading north at dawn on Saturday morning. I had watched them heading north from the wildlife refuge south of town at dawn, and coming back to roost at sundown for a month already. Tuesday was the day I didn’t see any come back in the evening. I think it’s safe to say they’re done for 2019.

In this video you can hear the strange trilling they make as they fly over. They’re chatty little things.

The arrival of the sandhill cranes on their migration back north is a sign of spring in the San Luis Valley, and of especial interest to Monte Vista where I live. The city hosts a Sandhill Crane Festival the second weekend of March and outside interest appears to have grown in leaps and bounds with each year. At least one churl on Facebook has had to point out twice that I know of that farmers here hated the racket the cranes made so much they would fire off cannons to frighten them away. Not everything has to change for the worse, thank God.

Wednesday was the first day the temperature cracked 70°F (21°C), making it the first day of the year in which I worked with my office windows open.

To think I’d had some posts in draft lined up in which I was going to talk about the passing of the Super Bowl and the Academy Awards as major media events. I may yet finish the one on the Super Bowl, if only out of fond remembrance for Super Bowl parties past.

There are other cultural passages going down. Many institutions we presumed were immortal are dying of cultural and technological obsolescence. I find it all very fascinating, but in writing this I realize I have to keep my eyes on the real prizes. The sun, the sky, my wife, my children, my cats, our house, our vehicles, the world immediately around us. We can work out from there, but quite honestly, most of what’s in the news is someone else’s problem. 

Farewell, March, and the first quarter of 2019. I’m a little bit closer to finishing my last book. I need to get a lot closer. See you in April.

All photographs in this post Copyright © 2019 by Lawrence Roy Aiken.