Mikes Thoughts

going and doing

Life is a matter of change. My mentor once told me when I pressed him for life advice to just accept it’s a constant. We had been walking in the Mojave Desert in companionable silence. RWR would muse the little canyon sides and his tireless blue eyes scanned little erosions for signs of prehistoric rock art. The quiet of the desert is almost a force sometimes. Hearing a voice seems to break the moment. Making it all human again. So when I asked he finally told me,

Nothing so constant as change

I realize now upon reflecting on that so long ago how right he was. We would continue to where the jeep should be. Somehow though it had been moved or we got it wrong. RWR muttered and got his compass and the USGS map out. We tried again to plot where we were. This is simple with a map and a few known points. Somehow first time when we left we were wrong.

Maps don’t lie. People do.

I just made that up. But he asked me to do the exercise. And we found the jeep some few hundred meters away.

Then to now

I always remember his change and constant thing. I’ve traveled a fair bit since then. Remembered the days doing archeology. Not working at it. Doing it. It’s a thing to do. I was convinced there really was not much work in it. Work would come later. Sometimes boring. Always long. Complicated.

Then I would go and do other things. Things which seemed far apart from those days spent walking the buttes or the Tehachapi mountain foothills. It became walking Siem Reap streets or quiet monuments of a past Khmer life in Angkor. All change yet a path.

A thing to write. This going and doing. Perhaps the words track the changes. From rock art to journal to blog. This progression with no real mile markers. Much like those days in the desert.

Then we sat under starry skies by the jeep and told stories. Drank warm Budweiser beers. Ate homemade chili and cornbread. Now life has gone to new places and I’m the old one. I track the changes by writing them now. Life here. Then. Now.

Rejoice in the change. You have no choice. It will come for you if you want or not.