Silpa and I set off from San Francisco towards our first stop: Death Valley. We made a quick pit stop at Whole Foods for some snacks and ice, where the woman checking us out asked if we were having a party. “No!” I replied excitedly. “A roadtrip!”
The drive down to Death Valley was fairly uneventful, until we hit the mountains. Beautiful, purple, statuesque mountains. Mountains that look like an extension of the ground, like they have been there forever.
What fascinated me was that Silpa and I experienced these mountains in profoundly different ways. She was overcome by the size of the mountains, and how tiny and inconsequential they made her feel. I was overwhelmed by their age; I had a sense of witnessing Earth as it was a billion years ago. I too felt inconsequential, but in time; not space. This experience inspired my first haiku:
Bearing witness to
The passage of time. Behold:
Purple mountains [_]Majestic. Ever
Present, never moving. Here
For millennia.
We didn’t have much time to soak in the mystery of these monumental mountains. Not long after passing through the first outcrop the windy, twisty road required our full attention. Silpa’s full attention, at least, as she was behind the wheel. My attention was focused on convincing myself that we weren’t going to die. Thus my next haiku:
Windy hairpin turns.
We shall go the speed limit,
thankyouverymuch.My stomach may be
in my throat, but rather there
than in the ravine.
