What a week! There were fires in Hagerman, the Banner Fire west of Stanley and one over by Fairfield. On Sunday, the skies were filled with smoke and it evoked memories of all that we went through three years ago with the Castle Rock Fire that threatened our town. Remember how we all pulled together and helped each other? Where have those feelings of camaraderie gone?
Is it just me or is everybody else isolated as well? I realize that sometimes we all have to withdraw and concentrate on our on well-being—not in a selfish way, more in a self-protective mode. The world seems to really be going crazy with mean-spirited folks dominating the headlines and radio talk shows and TV programming. Sometimes, you just have to close the door and try to figure out what is working for you. Is the quality of your life as good as it once was? Do you laugh like you used to do with your close friends? Maybe it's just the full moon—the harvest moon of August, which signals the end of summer.
Hey! Where did summer go, by the way? Wagon Days is a week away. What happened? Now we have eight months of winter, two months of spring, a month of fall and the rest is our summer. I remember when they used to last three or four months. No wonder we're all going amok. The pressures of holding a job and making a living has so entrapped our everyday thinking that we seem to have forgotten how to take the time to relax and have fun again. That is plainly wrong. Fun used to be the major part of our lives in this valley.
I was reminded of this when I attended a memorial for Pete Smith at the American Legion Hall. Pete had a lot of friends in town and they had gathered to share the stories of his life—and it was all fun. How do we recapture that magic again and avoid the fall of quality in our lives. Maybe, we just have to open the door, step out and make the time to reunite with one another again.
Nice talking to you.
