Word is, something big’s happening tonight on Project Runway. At least, that’s what I hear coming over the top of the cubicle wall. Check it out, yo. It’s gonna be huge.
I’m embarrassed that I even work in a place where the ambient sounds include discussions of Project Runway carried out by the very concerned voices of unseen females on the other side of the room. I am a pilgrim in an unholy land.
Could be worse. I do, after all, have a beautiful view looking out over a placid stretch of the Colorado River beneath deep blue skies and orange sandstone cliffs glowing in the early-morning sunshine. I pretend that the shiny thumbtack holding it all up is a UFO coming to deliver messages of peace and love and to take me somewhere where not only do I have such a view for real, but it’s not even through a window much less a recycled calendar page.
Shifting my eyes slightly to the left, I travel several hundred miles to the serene, snow-blanketed valley floor of Jackson Hole, gazing heavenward to where the shining snowfields of the South, Middle and Grand Tetons, Nez Perce and Mt. Owen dazzle in the bright afternoon light. That friendly and persistent flying saucer is here as well. They must really have something important to tell me, yet they never seem to get any closer.
When I swivel my head around to the right, another wintry scene is laid out before me: the forested valley of Yosemite, each branch of every tree bending under the burden of new-fallen snow, the 3,000-foot façade of El Capitan and the distant visage of the iconic Half Dome the only places within view too steep to support a blanket of white. Accompanying our thumbtack-like interstellar traveler in this vista is a gigantic, levitating set of century-old words from John Muir that stretch clear across the valley from one cliff top to the other:
Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home, that wildness is a necessity, and that mountain parks and reservations are useful not only as fountains of timber and irrigating rivers, but as fountains of life.
Oh, but don’t forget Project Runway tonight. Something big is gonna happen.
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13 comments:
Ah! A fellow daydreamer! Awesome.
You have quite the diverse workplace.
If only they'd get together to talk about America's Next Top Model...
It's times this that I'm glad I have a giant office all to myself. Also, I need the link to your co-workers website again. That always makes me feel better about myself.
does anyone else have that co-worker that seems to think that the volume on his phone is not working so he overcompensates? i can hear every word the guy next to me is saying. i guess his parents never taught him about using his inside voice! SHUT UP!!!
hightower
i'll thank you not to make disparaging remarks about project runway, sir.
and btw courtney, i've never seen America's Next Top Model but i'll bet money that Project Runway is waaaaaaaay better than a show hosted by tyra banks.
It's Heidi versus Tyra and i'm in the Klum camp.
by the way, mickey, you need to weigh in on the Ice Bears vs. Ice Gators debate raging in the comment list of my Golden Compass blog.
Don't let it go to your head, but for some odd reason i value your opinion greatly, expecially of matters of great import such as a hypothetical fight between two non-existant creatures.
Um, excuse me, Severo, but it was Noelle that brought up America's Next Top Model, not me. I do not watch such trash. I prefer to stimulate my intellect by watching Dancing with the Stars, thank you very much.
This post really wasn't about shitty reality TV, but whatever.
Well, to bring it back to topic... Mickey, you paint such a beautiful picture of what these places must actually look like. You're very descriptive in your writing, which is good for novel writing. You should consider it...
Thanks, Meaghan. That's exactly what I was fishing for.
Ehh, I'd say Mickey make a better living as a prose poet. Novels need plot more than imagery and there was no plot to this.
Always leave it up to Jacob to make you feel good about yourself!
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