1961

The distant moon hung steady in the sky, an unmoving constant behind barely moving mountains, racing silhouettes of trees, a flashing stripe on the road.

"Dad, how does the moon keep up with us?"

"Well, it's really, really fast, and it's following us."

My forehead was unused to wrinkling into a frown, but a slight one formed. Grownups were always giving silly answers to important questions, as if I couldn't understand the truth.

I could... I could tell a silly answer when I heard it.

Soon I got a glimpse of the answer. It appeared in the shape of a yellow house behind a white picket fence. Walking past, the pickets slid by me quickly, the flower bed less so, the trees at the side of the house, more slowly.

The moon must be very, very far away for it to move hardly at all when my father drove down that Glenn County road. It must be so far away it made mountains seem close. The moon must be almost as big as the world.

I'd seen a globe of the world. My dad had pointed out where we lived on it, and there was a map in his bedroom with little pins stuck in it that was like a small part of the globe. The moon must be almost as big as the world.

Well, maybe not quite that big. After all, this was the world, and it was only the moon, a blotchy disc in the sky.

The next chance I got I looked at the moon harder. I imagined how big the world was compared to the moon. If the world was up there in the sky, next to the moon, I bet it would be three or four times bigger.

I held my thumb and finger up pinching the moon in the sky. I spread my fingers until they were about an inch and a half apart.

"I bet the world would be about that big," I thought.

The moon has hung steady in my sky ever since.

I'm not sure what it is about the moon, but it's been my companion, sliding alongside my life as I skip through this single dimension of entropic mortality. It never changes. Not really. Every full moon has the same splotches in the same places.

I have changed.

That year, 1961, when I first considered the moon, was a special year.

I have had several important years. 1976, the year I discovered hiking and hitchhiking, adventures in the Sierras and along the West Coast. 1992, the year my son died. 2008, the year that ended with divorce.

But that year, 1961, that was particular.

It was the year my heart grew. It was the year I realized God was not like the Tooth Fairy. It was the year I changed from a little kid, unaware of a larger world. Events rolled over me like the weather. That year, I began to notice things.

My father. He was powerful, strong, quick, knew so much. He smelled of diesel, grease, grain, and sweat. He was a mysterious giant, a god. They told me I looked like him.

So I leaned in doorways with my arms folded the way he did, tried swaggering when I walked. I tried to be powerful, strong, and quick.

1961. It was the year I first opened my heart to God.

It didn't make me fit in any better with my father... but my eyes began to see... my heart began to see...