the view

Picture above is the sun setting over the Rocky Mountains, as seen from the 38th floor of a Denver hotel.

Part of my "trip reading" during the Western History Association Conference is The Best American Essays 2009. I realized that I just had to buy it when I saw that Mary Oliver was this year's editor.

A favorite quote from her Introduction that applies to blogwriting as well as more traditional forms of the essay:

We speak a good deal these days of the loss of community, and many of us feel that we have lost therefore something very precious. Essays can move us back into this not-quite-lost realm. Tackling a hundred subjects, in a hundred different styles, they are like letters from a stranger that you cannot bear to throw away. They haunt you; they strengthen you.

Perhaps I've been so busy contemplating the world of the 'not-quite lost' that I've had my head in the clouds for most of this last week. Somewhat literally, of course, as I've been staying in high-rise hotels for the duration of the conference, but also in that twice I've found myself lost and wandering around Denver city streets. How I can still get lost even with the aid of googlemaps is beyond me. But maybe there are only so many weighty thoughts that can occupy my brain at any given time....