Walking the Wall

There are moments when the world seems to have a refresh button and two of those moments stand out vividly in my mind. Standing on the floor of a valley in Togo, West Africa when I was 17 watching a wall of rain sweep down the mountain, across the clearing, and disappearing behind me, and the first few seconds of falling out of the plane while skydiving. Both experiences changed the colors of the world for me–greens became instantly and forever greener for me with the first, and blues became instantly and forever more blue for me with the second. With the first my feet felt more solid and tied to the ground and I remember walking around for days after with a surreal sense of connection to the world around me. With the second, it was a very long time before my feet felt like they were even on the ground when I was walking through a blue sky day.

There are other such moments in my life that are more psychological or emotionally that based, those moments like the first time I held my child, waking up from a long depression, staying instead of leaving, driving home from registering for college at 28 years old–these are moments when the world shifts and you can feel the direction of your life click over to another, new direction like a train switch clicking into place on the tracks.

There are smaller refreshes too, and the first big snowfall of the winter is one such refresh. It is hard not to have hope that tomorrow will be better and brighter and cleaner when your sitting warm in the house with the lights of a Christmas tree reflecting off the window that looks out into a world completely covered in white. The wind whips and swirls the snow and the only color that stands out is the red paint from the shed. Maybe tomorrow will be completely crappy, maybe in a few days the snow will turn to nasty slush at the side of the road and become nothing but a hindrance trying to get on with daily living–but for now, it’s magic and it feels like winter’s refresh button.