"I've never seen such tremendous sunrises and sunsets as you have in Florida," the tourist fisherman told me--and he went on to praise the clouds, the framing of palm trees, and the soft air. He didn't mention mosquitoes.
This sort of thing I've heard many times, only the place complimented might be anywhere from Maine to Arizona.
Now I am not throwing off on the Florida sunups and sundowns, and they often have a special quality because of cloud patterns formed by humidity, thunderheads, stratified winds, and the aforementioned palms. But there are fancy sunsets almost everywhere. At home, the tourist was a late riser.
When I was a kid, we camped in eastern Colorado, barely in sight of the Rockies, cloudlike and gigantic on the horizon. A farmer who let us camp on his land for 25 cents stood by while we gasped our wonder. We asked him questions about the mountains but he had no answers.
"I've never been there," he confessed. "Oughta go over there some time."
And some 25 years later I pulled my car into a garage at the foot of Pike's Peak, considered quite a trip with an automobile in those days--problems with vapor lock and altitude that sapped power. The garage specialized in preparing cars for the ascent and the man did my carburetor with the expertise of long practice. It was his specialty.
"Pretty rough trip is it?" I asked, staring at the road that wound up and out of sight toward the snowy peak.
"Couldn't tell you," the mechanic said. "Never have been up there."
And the master bass and duck guide on Currituck Sound, who said he'd never been outside the inlet although he'd lived for 60 years just inside it and owned a cruiser.
There is a great valley in Montana along the Yellowstone River beneath the Absaroka range, shoving up to where there's always snow and the peaks are jagged, formed into wild designs that imagination can make into almost anything.
But the formation that dominates the valley is not too hard to see, even for less imaginative people. It is the Sleeping Giant, a series of peaks and cliffs miles long that is shaped into an immense reclining head with eyes, mouth and chin, and a mile or two of chest with a thousand acres of hands folded restfully across it. The giant's blanket is loose but his feet show up plainly farther on as he lies flat on his back. It dominates the area and instead of being obliterated by new snow, the detail is actually accented by it.
My fishing friend was born there in the valley, an outdoorsman from the beginning, and a traveler for fish and game. He was in his fifties.
"The old giant sure shows up this morning," I said, staring upward.
"Yeah?" he said. "Show me that thing. I've heard abut it all my life."
A moment later he'd seen it for the first time.
"Wow!" he said.
This story originally appeared in Ridge Runners and Swamp Rats by Charles F. Waterman. Copyright (c) 1983 by Charley Waterman. All rights reserved.