Blast From the Past

I was reorganizing some files, records, pictures, and my journals that I'd written in over the last 15 years. I came across one that was always one of my favorites. Written beside an early morning campfire, while the coffee was hung over the coals. I take my wind-up alarm clock with me wherever I go, and I had set it to get warm and get the coffee ready so we could eat breakfast and head out for a day of fly-fishing. I sat thinking, I'll never have this moment back again. I pulled my journal out of my pack and wrote these words:

The hand, the moving, ticking hand,
The never stopping hand that glows light green in the night
Never stops. Never.
The ceaseless tick reminds me the moment is gone.
The hand never stops or slows for anyone or anything.
Only obeyed.
The hand moves forward into uncharted time,
Yet to be experienced, while moments of grief or ehxhaltation wait
On those who have yet to see what is in store for the day in the next tick.
The hand cannot move backward, the past is relegated only to memories,
Comforting, disheartening, dissappointing, exciting, and apathetic.
Unaffected by its surroundings in the moment, that are not erasable.
The ticking hand stops for nothing, it moves us one click closer to our end.
With each clockwise movement of that hand I am brought closer to the dust,
The dust from whence I came.
The clock reminds me of the passage and gift of time,
And my only control I possess is my actions and reactions between the ticks.



Clint Stephenson, March 9th, 2001

By the way the smell of the coffee and the smell of bacon sizzling in a cast iron pot over the fire awakened the rest of the troops.