I love the word phenomenal.
Not so long ago, I thought it was overused. Dramatic, even absurd.
But our road trips have changed my mind. I’ve come to realize there are phenomena everywhere.
So no, I’m not overusing the word. I’m finally appreciating how often it applies.
Take the highway toward Show Low, Arizona. Ancient volcanic mounds pimple the ground, covered in new spring-green grass. They look for all the world as though someone rolled out Astroturf for a miniature golf course for giants.
Thousands of years of geological upheaval, and my first thought is artificial grass. Phenomenal.
Then there are the wildflowers. We know there are seeds everywhere, carried on the wind or delivered by birds. Somehow, the luckiest seeds find the perfect nook or cranny, just enough soil to take hold, just enough sunlight to flourish. Nobody planted them. Nobody tends them. Yet there they are, thriving in places where common sense might suggest they shouldn’t.
And then there was the woman sitting beside a shallow puddle of rainwater in a slab of sandstone. She’d been there awhile, stirring the water with a stick, seemingly fascinated by something we couldn’t see. Naturally, we had to find out what held her attention.
Polywogs! (known to others as tadpoles) An entire nursery of tiny lives swimming around in a temporary puddle in the middle of an enormous landscape. How did they get there? Would the water last long enough for them to become frogs?
And the woman? A massage therapist living on the road, traveling between gigs. Another fascinating story discovered because we stopped to satisfy our curiosity.
Sometimes the phenomenon isn’t just what you discover. It’s the stranger who leads you to it.
There’s the enormous tree supporting an extraordinary amount of mistletoe in its massive branches. An entire community living off one magnificent host. I wonder how long they’ve been keeping company.
And then there’s the tree that refused to give in to the wind. Bent, twisted, gnarly and defiant. The wind may have dictated its shape, but it never persuaded that tree to quit. I admire that.
The sky always has a story. Sometimes it’s dramatic, great thunderheads building on the horizon. Sometimes it’s a gentle sweep of clouds that seem to be traveling right along with us. And then there are the cloud shadows, drifting across mountains and valleys, changing the colors and contours of the landscape as they pass. A moving patchwork of sunlight and shade, never quite the same from one moment to the next. The sky and music narrate our journey, changing the mood from one mile to the next.
And not all phenomena are nature’s doing.
There are dams that hold back astonishing volumes of water, bridges that span what once seemed impossible, and roads carved through mountains and stretched across deserts. Human imagination and determination made visible.
Actually, the road itself is phenomenal. Someone imagined a way through, someone figured out how to build it, and now here we are, traveling it in a remarkable machine that is itself a collection of engineering wonders.
Maybe that’s what I love most about our road trips.
David drives. I watch the world unfold. We talk about what we see, wonder how it came to be, and occasionally laugh at the peculiar things that catch our attention.
There’s always something worth noticing.
Not everything phenomenal announces itself with grandeur. Sometimes it’s a mountain. Sometimes it’s a bridge. Sometimes it’s one stubborn little flower growing out of a crack in the rocks.
One of the most phenomenal things of all is having someone beside you who appreciates the wonder of it, too.
Six cylinders behind us. The road ahead.