Two Essay Segments 02/24/2020

“Hold fast to dreams

For if dreams die

Life is a broken-winged bird

That cannot fly.”

-Langston Hughes

Dreams are the chemical make-up of our futures. Without them, I don’t think In can be me. I am a dreamer and I always have been. Since I heard the story of Cinderella I’ve wanted a Prince Charming. Since I heard there was a Peter Lik, I’ve wanted to have his job and be just like him. 

The weekend of the 14th of February was when I could live part of that dream. The night of February 14th, I felt like Cinderella and when the morning came, I went an adventure to live out my dreams. We traveled to the Southern-most part of the state of Utah to see some of the great wonders of the world in Kanab. One place that we traveled to was most awe-inspiring: the horseshoe bend. Ever since I can remember, I have wanted to see this destination. I think it has been ever since my family inherited a picture of it taken by Peter Lik and ever since it began to be hung in my favorite room in the house, the room I spent the most time in writing and creating. I don’t remember the first time that I saw that picture, but I do remember always wanting to go there to see it for myself. I always wondered if I would ever get the chance. 

Well I got the chance and it wasn’t what I imagined, it was better. Approaching the view, I knew there was something amazing people were so intrigued to travel for miles to come see. You could feel it in the energies there and there was no doubt God created it. There was no way that man could make something so sublime. Standing out there, I remembered my old friend Peter Lik. I thought in the way that maybe he would have thought about such a beautiful landscape. I imagined that he would have stood where I stood feeling similarly as I did then. In those feelings, I felt close to him then. I not only felt close to Lik, but also the people who had attempted to photograph that landscape before I had. Then ultimately, I felt closer to the creator of the sublime scape in front of me. Felt closer to Him then too. 

I like to think of the feelings I was feeling in those moments as a feeling of the sublime. A feeling that you know when you feel it. It is a feeling when you feel that something is bigger and more complex than you. I feel this way each time that I go up into the mountains or experience something within nature. I felt it that one time a mama deer came close to me. The beast and her beaty black eyes staring at me probably knowing that she could trample me and probably kill me at anytime, but also scared of the possibility that I might have an unprecedented and alternative plan that she hadn’t seen before. That is sublime. When there is so much space out in the world or in a canyon that you cannot count the trees. When you see the light that makes us all up as children of a supreme and sublime creator in a stranger who becomes a close friend, that is the sublime. My favorite moments so far in my life.