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March Slice of Life No. 17  *  Celebrate This Week.

I found my slice on a book cover.

I was sorting through a dozen randomly organized books. [Isn’t that an oxymoron?] These books are on a the shelf next to the place where my carry-on bag waits in my office for my next trip. These are books that I’m currently reading or books I keep handy to reread when I travel.

One of these books is David McCullough’s Brave Companions, Portraits in History. I highly recommend it; I’ve read it so many times. I’ve dog-eared pages, underlined parts that inspire me, written in margins. And on the back cover, one morning during  a flight, I had penned my observations and thoughts in the form of a prose poem.

August 23.

Driving to the airport —
Clouds hang low, roll upon roll, dark on the underside. I wonder, Soiled by city smog? We need a cleansing rain. But on top, these clouds are white, bleached by the sun. A light mist falls against the windshield, but not enough to make the pavement wet.

Takeoff —
I feel the moment our wheels leave earth. We climb. We join the clouds. They wrap their wispy tentacles around our shell for a moment. We soar beyond them. Pouting at our escape, they close in beneath us, hiding the river, the mountains, the roads, the houses, the schools I know are below.

In flight —
On my right snow-capped peaks rise above clouds — Jefferson and the Three Sisters–stalwart, majestic, unchanging against the azure horizon. On my left, Hood, Adams, Rainier, and St. Helens — pristine peaks, sentinels of my home.

Clouds have dispersed — a few linger here and there. Beneath are mysteriously dark forested slopes, the Cascades. Soon they will give way to desert…  to the Rockies… then, to the Great Plains.

 


 

I celebrate the majestic beauty of the mountains of the Northwest.

The view from my window during departure of PDX.

Three Sisters, from along Hwy 20 between Sisters and Bend, Oregon

Mt. Washington, taken along Hwy 20, heading to Sisters, Oregon.


 


Head over to
http://twowritingteachers.org
for more slice of life stories.
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Celebrate this Week
with Ruth Ayres
#Celebratelu.