This is worth revisiting...

For those of us who had the pleasure of watching this on Oscar night, here it is again. For those that didn't, enjoy.

Stolen Moment

May 21, 2009

Hiking by myself today was like a stolen moment. It was something that I’ve always been told not to do—and my better judgment tells me not to do it either. But I did it anyway.  The reward I got for my pains was worth it. There was no one, no one, on the trail. I had the beautiful u-shaped valley bathed in partly-cloudy light all the myself. The ravages of last winter's snowfalls and avalanches have left the slender branches of trees all straining in one direction: down. Boulders and logs litter the ground. Everything is young, delicate green. The wind is warm, with an occasional wisp of alpine, glacial air blowing of the still-melting snow farther up. 

Timpanogas rises before me, like a god. A snake or two slides out of view. I see a dark patch in the trees on the trail below me. Is it a moose? I hope not.
The roar of the waterfall is oddly deafening after so much quiet.

A solitary figure has preceded me to the top. He stands at the top of the waterfall, about 100 yards away. He raises his arm in greeting. I raise my arm back. I sit on a rock to let my racing heart cool down. On the trail back down, the trail is surrounded by growth. Green spills over the edges of the trail like a river bursting its banks. Greening trees arch over the top, like a tunnel. Every green thing is wrapping over and under me, in a kind of open-air coziness, like a giant, green mossy comforter.

Uncleverness

Today I went to go deliver something to a friend whose apartment complex I'd never been to. When I got there, I could see that the complex was, if not giant, at least kind of big and sprawly. I wondered whether I should just pick a stairwell and check every third floor until I found apartment 303 or...huzzah! I could ask this nice young man who clearly lived there if he could kindly direct me to the right place. "Excuse me," I say. "Could you tell me where 303 is? Is it in this stairwell?" He looks at me with that smirk I so despise (the smirk that says, "I have something so clever to say that only I will think it's funny") and says, "Well, I guess it's on the third floor." I feel my contempt rising. I force a smile (more like a sneer) and explain to him, in nicer terms than this, that I was not born yesterday. (I actually said something, "Yeah, I got the third floor part.") But I think he read my tone, which is never hard to do, and promptly cut the crap and told me where to go.

Such a bore! And I do not tolerate bores.