First a backtrack, then an installment

Backtrack:
I lost my job. Yep. Wednesday April 8th Guardian let me go. You can ask me about it privately - I've got no problem talking about it, because it seems to clearly be God's hand at work. Indeed, on the way home my primary thought was to stifle feelings of excessive joy and excitement. A world of opportunity was suddenly flung open to me! I have not looked back, and within a day I started talking with Mike Q about a road trip to Uncle Keith's house in Utah -- the crazy wild hair idea I had never quite done during my months of freedom between graduation and Guardian. Which brings us to the

Installment:
First installment, that is. Of my trip journal.
Yes indeed, to my continued amazement, the pieces of the trip kept falling into place. Mike was back from temporary work in Harrisburg--still unemployed. If we left quickly, we would have nearly a month, and still get back 6 weeks before youth camp, which was plenty of time for all the intense planning work. Nothing huge would be missed at home. The plans marched on. I laid out my schedule for the week after my release: taxes, room, room, laundry, care group, packing. The days passed in necessary activity, my room finally bloomed in resplendent cleanliness and orderliness, and the theoretical departure loomed ever nearer. Saying good-bye to friends after lunch Sunday left a slight smudge of reality on me, but even pulling away from the house and rolling down the hill, even 8 hours of driving Sunday and 16 Monday, even the sight of mountains at the edge of the sky Tuesday morning did not penetrate my mind and heart with the reality of this trip. Climbing over the Rockies as the Mazda gasped for air, descending through the awe-inspiring Glenwood Canyon, and feeling the twinge of fear as the gas needle sidled down and no settlement, green thing or prospect of life or fuel presented itself all filled me with knowing that I was in the WEST. Drawing in great pure breaths of warm, blowing air.. letting my ears reach out as far as they might without ever meeting a din of man-made noise.. standing on a high rock with a hand on my knee, casting my eyes in a great semicircle, surveying vast land stretched out in mighty distance, rocky creekbed dry with thirst and piercing in jagged rock beauty, mesas upthrust from the land like craggy tables of desert gods.. all rich tan framed against the soft, pure blue sky... all this was the West, and all this I relished with exquisite enjoyment. But only now, as I sit facing the window, keyboard on my lap, soaking in the flickering sea of lights in the Salt Lake City valley below, is the reality slowing creeping upon me that I am back here. Back in Uncle Keith's House - the awe of my childhood. Back in the luxurious house of many stairs and levels and windows that entranced me, and still does. Back where the view out of every window draws a gasp of amazement. Others might perhaps come here and think it nothing that special, or enjoy it at a lesser level. But for me, for some reason, this place stirs me so deeply that crying seems the only fitting outlet. That, or just standing, motionless as long as reason will let me be, before the view. Such I did last time I was here, 6 or 7 years ago, when it seemed most likely that I would never be here again. Yet here I am, and my heart is full right now. There is more I could say, and will later, but this has been an attempt, shaped by listening to Milton's Paradise Lost all day, at putting into words the tugging of my heartstrings that this place stirs. With all my might I relish this moment. The whole stay is before me, untainted by the passage of time and the looming of end, pregnant with possibility and anticipation, full of rich days to be lived. This is the purest moment of any trip, and I savor it, and share it. With my future self, and with any who care to read and enter into my world.

Tasting, entranced yet burningly unsatiated, tiny earthly droplets of Heavenly bliss, I bid thee good night.