On a more cheerful note, we're in Truth or Consequences on the first day of a little touristing.
It's not much of a town, but we love it for its dusty little cluster of old auto courts huddled around several acres of hot mineral springs. The steamy water seeps up into concrete basins in faded bath houses where road-weary travelers refresh themselves as wanderers in this region have done for millennia.
During an earlier visit as I rectified my humors in the 107-degree water, it suddenly occurred to me that my bath had been warmed by heat that was absolutely primal, never cool since it got hot, however many billions of years ago that was.
My realization dazzled me and sent my mind reeling off into a series of even deeper thoughts about how vast the universe and how small a thing is man etc etc.
I was still wallowing in cosmic truths the next day when we visited the local museum and I browsed the gift shop for a book on geothermal heat. When I located one and found the page that described the phenomenon on which the town and its museum depend for their living, I drifted over to the counter to share my insights with the clerk.
"Doesn't it amaze you sometimes when you're sitting in the springs to realize that you're actually bathing in the original heat of The Big Bang," I asked him.
After a moment's reflection, he replied. "Um, yeah, are you gonna buy that?"
I was abashed and deflated, but I learned my lesson. On this trip I'm curbing my enthusiasm.
. . . But think of it, the original heat of The Big Bang!
That's really cool! ... that is, I mean .... (but it really is cool to think about it that way.)
ReplyDelete