Wonder: [wuhn-der] – to be filled with admiration, amazement, or awe; marvel. To speculate curiously or be curious about; be curious to know.
While traversing the various highways and backroads that crosshatch our wonderful country my wife and I have been provided ample time to wonder. A natural sense of curiosity accompanies long days on the road where responsibilities are fleeting and deadlines long forgotten.
Gazing at distant ridge lines, imagining what the breeze on our face would be like as we run and dance upon its precipice. The crackle and dull clunk of rock below our feet. Or maybe it is a sandy gravely rock scrunching and crunching as we patter along. Sweet piney scents of the ponderosas striking the back of our nostrils with each increasingly labored breath.
We look out at the vast valleys and fields stretching for miles at each point of the compass, daydreaming of pioneers or ancient horse-backed tribes hunting the golden hills for game. Peering ahead along the horizon as we crest a bluff of a hill, searching for the silvery light of the next “new” town.
When we are honest with ourselves we know this is only a season in our lives. We want a family and both dearly love being in community. While there is excitement in life on the road a different sort of joy can come from living alongside others.
Recently I befriended a 98yo patient of mine. In the late 1930’s she worked at a concession stand in Griffith Park in Los Angeles selling a young bow tie clad Walt Disney his 10 cent hamburger and 10 cent chocolate soda, or in the winter time hot apple pie with ice cream, also for 10 cents. She loved Walt. Not just because he was a good customer and a handsome man, but because of what his stories made her feel. In a time where she was making 25 cents an hour and could only find four hours of work a day, his stories, even if just for a moment took her away. Filled her with amazement and curiosity. It is a feeling she has cherished these 80 years since.
On her wall is a painting. It is the painting in the photo above and my patient painted that sometime in the last few years (she cant quite remember when). She titled it “Whats behind the rock?” It is of a place she has never been, somewhere she has always wanted to see, but has sadly accepted the reality that she will not. Her COPD is quite severe and her right leg is not so good anymore. But it hangs there next to her bed as a reminder of all that is out there. She looks at her own painting with intrigue because as her own physical world condenses and shrinks around her she can still look up to those brush strokes and invoke, if just for a second, the same feeling she had as an 18yo selling burgers in the park.
Ellen and I recently went out to Zion National Park for an ultra-marathon and as most PTs do, I shared a little of this with my patient. Hearing that we were going to the Utah desert my patient immediately glanced up to her photo with new light in her eyes.
“Young man, you go out there and you find out – Whats behind the rock.”
That coming weekend I looked. And for the next 80 years I hope I keep on looking.
Written by Stephen Stockhausen
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