I really should start cutting back on these crazy titles, but I thought it would at least be appropriate for my little foray into Romanticism.

My friend, Kim, and I were taking a trip across California and through the desert to attend a high school friend’s wedding. Kim told me that if we found any place interesting along the way, we could stop and check it out. But we were taking a merchant route so for miles there were only rest stops and Dennys’ and the outlines of orchards, which the headlights passed over in the dark. We had prearranged to stop at a Denny’s part way through the trip, but had no idea how much of a beacon of civilization it would become to us. MacDonalds may dot the nation, but the prevalence of that bright yellow hexagon in the great expanse from NorCal to SoCal was astounding.

I’m getting to the Romantic part I swear.

The next day, after a rest in the reasonably priced motel room Kim and I had split (which came with a free continental breakfast I might add), we worked on our respective wedding toasts which the bride had asked us to give. Kim sat by the window of our dim room and I was on the bed. We had arranged the curtain so that it still let light in through the sides, but shut out any site of any fellow guest walking by. I had my notebook laid on my lap in a vein of light doing some of my best post procrastination writing. Kim found this awesome quote by the author of “The Little Prince,” “Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction” and I was writing about the first time I met our friend in the 6th grade. The three of us went to both middle school and high school together. I thought about who we used to be, how much shorter we all were, and the people we transformed into.

After the wedding, Kim I were driving back to the motel, through a particularly desolate stretch of desert, when she peaked up through the windshield and realized how many stars were out. We just had to pull over and stare at the expanse. I had never seen so many stars in my life. We tried pointing out constellations we knew and even spotted a planet or two. Then as we twirled about on the side of the road with our heads craned back as far as they would go, we happen to whirl toward the same direction, just in time to see a faint light streak across the sky. I thought of the romantic thing scientists always say, that when you see starlight, your looking into the past. In the dark, I felt detached from everything. The sensation reduced me to a floating pair of eyes, without fatigue or fear or worry. We awed and wowed until the cold finally nagged me back into my body and into the car.

Before we had said our goodbyes and saw our friend off to her honeymoon, she had recommended we go visit this natural preserve just outside of town. It was called Rainbow Basin, and it peeked my interested when it was mentioned that the original Star Trek series shot some scenes there because the land looked so alien. And the area, apparently looked its best at sunrise. I set my alarm to give us just enough time to grab some clothes and coffee and when the hour came, Kim and I once again ventured through the desert. The sun rose as we drove. We turned off the highway onto a dirt road, pleading with the little Civic to hold together as it vibrated across the sand, gravel, and, what looked like, tank tracks. We turned at the “Scenic Drive” sign and made our way through land formations, shaped by the wind and rain. Mineral deposits made rainbow patterns along the sediment mountains. Veins of reddish and greenish and sand color were vibrant in the morning light. All colors of rock and pebble were peaking out of the sand and we knew one day erosion would release them, tumbling down to join the many others that littered the floor.

If I came back in a year, the path would probably look completely different. In a year, I would probably be different. I would always be the same person but different, transformed by all the pebbles that litter my life.