This July 4th we stood on a dock at Green Lake waiting for the fireworks to begin strobing the dark sky above Seattle. Except for the occasional pop of a bottle rocket, it was peaceful there, quiet. Our 9-month old daughter slept in her car-seat. My parents stood nearby holding hands. The water lapped against the dock pilings and nobody said anything.
As we kept looking skyward I had this strange thought that if everyone came out each night just to listen and watch the sky like this then the world would be different somehow. Better.
And then the fireworks started, far away, the muffled booms arriving several seconds after the flaring colors. Layla sensed the excitement and woke up and we lifted her to watch the display, her first. She smiled and reached her hands out as if trying to grab what she saw.
After it was over my mom said Well, if shes lucky shell have another 100 years of fireworks.
It got me thinking about just what she might see in her lifetime, and what Id still like to see in mine. There is so much out there, and on the other hand, so much less wilderness and wildlife. Sometimes it feels like were racing against time to experience something or somewhere before whatever it is that makes it special has been exhausted, used up, crowded out.
And yet the experiences we seek as once in a lifetime, the ones Josh Lew and other Matador community members have collected here, have a way of transcending time. Whether single events or processes that take weeks, months, or years, these experiences remind us that the world remains a magical place.