MaMaLiRZ

Life always has a habit of trying to get in the way. Whether it’s school and work or sports practice, life fills the day-to-day from sun up to sun down. Most days the day-to-day wins, but sometimes, sometimes we need to stretch the boundaries and even redefine them, like a VR headset and let our dreams win. Allow life to change your perspective. When I started the blog a couple weeks ago now, I started with a bold statement: I hate America. The quest63in365 is my way of turning all of my thoughts upside down, redrawing my boundaries every day. Love America like I did when I was a child and young adult. Find the freedom that so many have fought and died for, freeing myself from life’s bonds.

At 50 years old, I’m old and jaded. It snuck up on me like a female lion stocking her prey. The bounce about knocked me off of my feet, at a minimum, it took my breath away. Mortality started staring back at me out of nowhere, the audacity!, and I thought about the Dash. Something that I’ve pondered in the past, the dash, but this time the thoughts came with a new sort of urgency, as if the mirror had been lying to me all these days that turned into years. What will my children remember for the span of my “dash”?

I must bring the dash to life, notarize our time together. The quest isn’t only about me finding the love for my country again, it’s more about standing beside them and seeing the beauty through their eyes. My eyes won’t be peeled to sky in the International Dark Sky Places, it will be steeled to their faces, drilling into the depths of their thoughts and the grander in their eyes. My weak attempt to remember the childhood spender and jubilee. This quest is about experiencing them falling in love with our magnificent country.

The grander of the Milky Way without the human light pollution, well mostly, not including the excess of satellites circumventing our planet, and imagine how the night sky must have looked during early exploration and life. We will lie on our backs and find the constellations of our birth and talk about the beauty of our lives together. We will ground ourselves to the hollowed grounds, our roots intertwined with the trees as they whisper the secrets of all they have seen and the generations that came before us.

This is my dream for our trip to Joshua Tree and Death Valley. Both have been designated International Dark Sky Places and I’ve tentatively reserved a Ford Bronco outfitted for 4×4 and camping. I’ve reserved a campsite at Cottonwood Campground at Joshua Tree and Sunset Campground at Death Valley, both through Recreation.com, with the dream of having smor’es under the stars with the two loves of my life while we talk about our hopes and our dreams our loves and our fears.

All of this of course, as long as life doesn’t get in the way.

I encourage you to release yourself and allow the beauty of life to creep back in and refresh your soul.

Photo courtesy of Nate Rayfield at iStock.