...for having jeans in my size on sale for $6.88 and $9.99. Okay, it's not an Oscar, but Academy Sporting Goods has been one of my top ten discoveries of 2003.
The new year is a time for lists, either looking back or forward. I am going to offer ten visions I'd like to see. To have them in my imagination is a sugarplum gift.
1. A friend has just moved back to Nebraska from Idaho. Her mention of seeing grain elevators again set off a terrible ache of geographic homesickness. I would love to see the flat, straight highway in the reduced speed zone, with the grain elevators, railroad tracks, and telephone wires off to the left. A light coating of snow on dark brown stubble neatly combed into rows under a slate gray sky would bring me to tears.
2. Sunrise over the South Dakota Badlands. I can smell the chalk, dust, and sage, see the snake and the magpie. Tall sunflowers grow along every fence. The late night short cut to the Badlands is a profound memory. We so rarely visit a place without artificial lights. The Milky Way seemed to swirl and wrap about us in ribbons.
3. Mexican freetail bats exiting Carlsbad Caverns. This sight is still one of the most powerful spiritual experiences of my life.
4. Hot-air balloons lifting off at the Plano Balloon Festival and skimming over the pink lake in the early dawn light.
5. The Monahans Sand Dunes of West Texas with their cleansing winds and shifting forms. Sandpaper for mental anxiety. Alternate candidate: The white lizards of White Sands, N. M.
6. A lapful of rapt little boys listening to stories about wolves and dogs.
7. The frozen purple midnight solitude at the bottom of Palo Duro Canyon following a March blizzard, and better yet, the last of the snow on the red rock formations the next morning.
8. Buzzards soaring over Dinosaur Valley State Park viewed while sitting on the river bottom and flying a kite. Lift! Soar! Tug!
9. The inside of an old-timey hardware store with three aisles, squeaky-dark wooden floor, tiny drawers built into the wall, a loft over the main floor, dust motes and light from the tall windows facing Main, and the smell of galvanized buckets.
10. A sandbar on the Platte River, preferably with the smells of oatmeal cookies, driftwood, and bonfire, and the sound of Bob Devaney's Cornhuskers beating the Oklahoma Sooners on an early transistor radio.
Few milestones in my life have been as satisfying as learning to zip a red plaid autumn jacket. The zipper pull is still a train engine, and the zipper is the train track. Matching the two sides of the jacket and coupling the parts of the zipper pull, to zip my jacket without derailment is still scented with dry pin oak, maple, sycamore leaves, and accomplishment.
The very best in 2004,
Nancy-Louise
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