There's a whole lot of 'where to next'-ing going on right now. I'm not sure there are a commensurate number of answers which leads to some very uncertain times. From politics to sports, economics to employment, cultural fads to breaking news, looking for anything that's certain seems a lost cause. In surfing they refer to riding the wave which I guess is as good a metaphor for where we are as a nation and a world. The problem of course is that no one really knows what the wave is going to do. One of the gentlemen I worked with at my last employer, when asked how he was, would always respond with "Living the dream!" I always took that as a somewhat sarcastic response, but hey, if he's reading this blog, here's hoping that dream came true.
I'm of an age where more often than not what's old is new again. So much of what is going on today isn't so much new as it simply hasn't been experienced before by younger generations. Whether they will truly learn any more from that experience than my generation did (or didn't depending on your point of view) is unknown but hope as they say springs eternal so I remain an optimist. I'm sure someone has observed that optimism is a wonderful thing, at least until confronted by reality. And reality today seems all about questioning whether or not anyone really knows what's going on. Thus the question: "Where to next?"
My personal optimism expresses itself in continuing to find beauty and wonder in the world around me. And that's what keeps me proverbially paddling back out into stormy seas to catch, and hopefully ride, that next wave. Fortunately I have a willing partner to join me on that wave wherever it may take us. Thanks to COVID, travel over the last couple of years has been challenging (I have a knack for understating the obvious) but now that Mr. Biden is telling us that "The pandemic is over" and most Americans are far more concerned with inflation than vaccination, my better half and I are expanding our wave riding to more distant shores. We're heading east to Latitude 38°43'0.01"N, 9°8'21.6"E Longitude to start our next adventure. I haven't been there since I was a child traveling with my folks and am curious to see what has changed and what has stayed the same. It's a beautiful place but on this trip its not so much the destination as what we'll be doing once we get there that I'm most excited about. Our return trip, at least for me, is the trip of a lifetime and something I've dreamed about since I was a young lad and first starting to read about such things. That long-ago dream never died and now I, like my work compatriot above, will be finally "Living the dream!"
Meanwhile, it hasn't been too hard to find beauty of a natural kind in my neck of the woods (prairie?) given the kind of Fall we've been having in Colorado. Yesterday I had a chance to do some filming at South Valley Park, one of Jefferson County's open space areas which this time of year is ablaze with color set against the backdrop of spectacular rock formations. Here's the short video from that foray:
I hope your Fall allows you to find the beauty in your world. In uncertain times, the only thing I'm still sure of is that its there, if only we will look.
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