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HELEN'S JOURNAL |
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| Date: 1st May
| Time: night time | Place: Meredith & Noah's | |||
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Like Alice, my daily world at the moment seems to be getting curiouser and curiouser. Yesterday I stood awestruck, gazing down into the Grand Canyon, longing to hike to the bottom of it, feel the heat of it, what it smelt like, what it sounded like. Today I stood at the rim of a crater formed 50,000 years ago in the Arizona desert. It was the result of a meteor hurtling to earth at about 40,000 mph. The crater formed is 700 ft deep and nearly 4,000 ft across. It made me think about that stalagtite and the canyon - how these beautiful creations had taken hundreds of thousands of years. This crater has formed in an instant, changing the shape of the earth forever. I looked up at the sky - imagining that tiny light appearing one day and getting bigger and bigger... As we left the canyon last night, we could see the comet clearly in the sky with its bright tail of light. So by this afternoon it seemed quite natural to drive up to a huge white dome with the words Meteor City splashed, rainbow-like, across the top. Inside we were to meet Dale and Judy, who turned out to be great friends with none other than Bob from Huckberry. Indeed Bob is halfway through painting a 66ft mural/map of Route 66 on one of the 'city walls'. The gift shop was full of his postcards, pictures and even newspaper articles about him. Knowing that he would be coming back to continue working on the mural, we asked Dale to give him a message. Dale took the parcel, saying, 'We'll send it with someone who's passing through in the other direction. He'll get it quicker that way.' And I thought how amazing it was that so many of the people we've met along the road know each other, even if they live in tiny towns miles apart. It really is that - the old road - which joins the towns, joins the people. I hope that Bob gets the message - I don't doubt that he will. But you know, he's not in an hurry to get that mural finished. Dale reckons he'll be back to do a bit more in August. He's doing it because he loves the road and he loves to paint, 'Have pens; will travel.' And anyway, as I said earlier, beautiful creations take time. |
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