A riffle spread on the surface of the swimming pool here at Tropicana today, the softest breath of wind wrinkling the water like tiny smile lines at the corner of someone's mouth. It awoke me my latent love of calm water in sublime places. I wanted to be at another lake, somewhere else, gazing at high granite peaks, wrinkled through ages by a sculptor's mighty hand. I wanted to cast a line into a blue green depth, and smell the scent of pine as I reeled it in. I wanted to breath thin air, clean and crisp and cold. I just wanted to be home.

In short, I am in love. And I am against my will away from my beloved, with no hope of seeing her soon. It's a strange thought to me, to think of the Sierras existing right now, without me. I can imagine the cabin my grandparents own, sitting uninhabited as chipmunks still scurry busily here and there around it. It's continuing. The same crisp air is there, accessible to all, but I cannot go and breathe it.

I think I'll pull a Lancelot and go mad.

In essence, I think this is a sign of the positive role that emotions can play in our lives. These emotions are results of a certain set of beliefs that I hold about the High Sierra. I have a high view of them, I recognize in them Beauty, and thus I am drawn towards them. The emotions are a push on my will to get me to act on my knowledge.

We think of God this way through His Son. We look to the Beauty incarnate, and recognizing His worth we are moved to move "further up and further in." And He has provided so many means for the inspiration of this love in giving man a sub-creative faculty! Churches, books, paintings, the imagination, all of these provide us a way of seeing God better, inspiring more love, and drawing into more perfect communion with the Trinity. Praise God for His wisdom in our creation! He has created us to perfectly relate to Himself.