Our wife gave us a wonderful Father’s Day present last week- the rings of Saturn.
We traveled to Great Basin National Park to do some star gazing and it was in a word AWESOME.
But before we got there we learned or rather relearned some very important lessons.
First a car is not a tank.
While one can and we did press the pedal to the metal down gravel roads in our Merkava tank we never should have tried it last week in a Mazda. Really bad for the tires we found out and that leads us to our second lesson when our wife says we are going to fast, we probably are.
The next lesson we relearned was that when one has car problems there is no better place to break down in the world than rural America.
Special thanks to Royce Iverson and family from the Iverson Ranch and the Mt. Moriah stone works.
Mr. Iverson took us in gave us ice cold water lent us his phone and helped with our car.
Kindness is something that cannot be repaid but only paid forward.
We also thank Dean Baker an old true friend who dropped what he was doing to tow us the last 15 miles into Baker.
And then of course there is Denise Coyle owner of the Border Inn whose friendship and hospitality we treasure while her politics are just a little to the left of Nancy Pelosi.
Way out here politics don’t matter that much. the nuances of right and left on the national level can and should be ignored.
Those of us who live in the Great Basin have more in common than any difference. Indeed our differences are superficial at best and frivolous at worst.
From Elko to Ely to Wendover to even little old Baker the people who have come here to make lives need each other or we will face the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune alone. Alone we lose, together we win.
One more thing that brilliant night sky is glorious. One may need a telescope to see the rings of saturn but take a short drive out of town, lie down and there in all its glory is the universe.