How Utah Reminds you of Calculus and Renders you Temporarily Writerly. Hmmph.

Coming down highway 128, the earth reveals itself: red, valved, lumpen. There are cliffs and spires, great spurts of stone. You've seen it in pictures; you don't need anyone to tell you. You go there to feel small and temporary. You want that sense of enclosing permanence, the kind you can't get anymore from God. Landscape is the next best thing.

You forget things. Shampoo, thank yous, what the sun through the kitchen widow at home looks like in the mornings. You forget, or you never knew, that the whole of what you're driving through was under water, or just above it. You forget that water, even though it is now invisible (inaudible, easy to breathe) is what you're really driving through. The landscape is not permanent. It is not a firm thing at all, but rather an impression of movement, an accounting of change.