On Any Monday, in Moab...
On Monday, August 1, 2011 a U.S. congressional
mandate to allow the world to go on spinning was still one day away. If
agreement on raising the artificially contrived federal debt ceiling
could not be reached by the following day, the sky would fall and the
world would revert to being flat. That prospect seemed like a big
setback to most conscious humans.
However, sixty or seventy Flat-Earthers
recently elected to the U.S. House of Representatives seemed to relish
in their power to send us all back to the economic Dark Ages. Like
petulant children playing with a new chemistry set, “So what”, they
said, “If we explode society as we know it?” “Not our fault”, they
assured us. “This has been going on for years…” Since I began writing
this story, the Dow Jones Industrial Average tanked by over 500 points
and then rose by an unreassuring sixty-points the following day.
That evening, rather than dwelling on such morose potentials, I clicked on an unpublicized webpage, which commands a simultaneous view of all nine Moablive.com
Utah webcams. Viewing the scene across my own personal energy bridge, I
found myself looking through the front office window at the Moab Rim Campark.
Suspended there, over Moab's Slickrock Trail I saw a webcam image of a
double-rainbow. Looking in turn at each of five webcams in the Spanish Valley,
I could see different slices of the scene. Stitching it together in my
mind, I watched a summer storm hit Moab and then dissipate on the slopes
of the La Sal Range.
If we are to believe what the mainstream media tell us about our world, it is a sad and dangerous place. If we believe our own eyes, we know that our world is a wild and wondrous place,
almost begging for our attention. As heat and drought imperil crops and
lives throughout the middle section of the U.S. this summer, Moab
has recorded several substantial rainstorms. Airflow from the northwest
has vied for position with a strong monsoonal flow from the south.
During July 2011, storms from the south followed storms from the
northwest. The combination kept rivers running high and replenished the
local water table.
In this world, one Moab was located in ancient Syria, near the Dead Sea. The other, manifested more recently in Southeastern Utah. The name “Moab” means “the far country”,
and each Moab qualifies for that title. When we are not there to
witness events firsthand, forgotten is the beauty of those wild places.
On this page I compiled a slideshow of webcam images
captured that evening. Even if our economy grinds to a halt, we can
live in hope that such beautiful weather events will continue to sweep
through the far country each summer, and forever.
By James McGillis at 04:44 PM | | Comments (0) | Link
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