“Saigon… shit; I’m still only in Saigon… Every time I think I’m gonna wake up back in the jungle. When I was home after my first tour, it was worse. I’d wake up and there’d be nothing. I hardly said a word to my wife, until I said “yes” to a divorce. When I was here, I wanted to be there; when I was there, all I could think of was getting back into the jungle. I’m here a week now… waiting for a mission… getting softer; every minute I stay in this room, I get weaker, and every minute Charlie squats in the bush, he gets stronger. Each time I looked around, the walls moved in a little tighter.” – Martin Sheen as U.S. Special Forces Captain Willard in Apocalypse Now
Life has a way of sneaking up on you. Job, house, bills, cars, insurance, investments, spouse, anniversaries, vacations, children, birthdays, education, sports, cell phones, email. Complexity tends to increase as the days, weeks, months and years pass. You do what you need to do to get everything done. You set goals, a new car, a second house, and often achieving your goals adds to the pace of your life. The overhead of managing your cumulative belongings, relationships and commitments tends to grow.
In spite of careful planning and steady progress towards your goals, at some point you may sense a subtle disconnect between getting what you want, and wanting what you get. You may notice the gradual erosion of the activities you engaged in and the traditions you practiced, including the ones that contributed to making you who you are, and the ones that soothed your soul.
Every once in a while you have the opportunity to step back, to reassess your goals, your priorities, and the incremental and cumulative effect that they have on your life. You may decide on a change, or some kinds of change may come at you with little warning. Change can be difficult, it can be stressful, but it can also provide the opportunity to adjust the things that you can control – your career, your residence, what you do with your free time – to restore balance. In fact, who you spend time with, including your spouse, is one of the choices you make that can be changed.
Like Captain Willard, I said yes to a divorce. I dream of waking up in a jungle. The temperate jungle of the California redwood forest or the granite towers of Yosemite. The stone jungle of Utah’s slot canyons. The intricately layered and wind-carved sandstone of Arizona’s buttes and mesas. The blazing aspen of Colorado’s high country. When I’m here, I want to be there.
Nevada… shit; I’m still only in Nevada.
Don’t get me wrong; I like Nevada. There are some truly beautiful sites in Nevada, but I wouldn’t be visiting those on this day. Crossing Nevada can be an exercise, in concentration, in stamina, in your ability to absorb coffee. My crossing consisted of boredom, sparse radio coverage with stations in unfamiliar formats (country, evangelical), and the occassional shock of seeing a tree. Sometimes a live one! It was in this waking stupor that I approached the exit for Deeth, which vaguely struck me as eerily similar to “Death”, perhaps spoken in an ancient Celtic dialect.
Smaller, tighter columns danced a few hundred yards away. It was still a bit unreal, but it was definitely getting downright interesting. I did what needed to be done: grabbed my camera, snapped my tripod open and locked the legs, clicked the camera in and started shooting. The funnels were highly unstable, appearing in places for a few short minutes, then starting up elsewhere and repeating the process. I counted as many as seven distinct areas where tornadoes were being spawned, with as many as five reaching the ground at any given time.
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