Living here out beyond the edge of the North American continent has a surprising effect on your brain. If you’re new, and don’t really know anybody yet or have any regular routines, then this place and its geography can really freak you out. You start to see a little further, daydream, and think about connections that were vague and unclear before. It’s an east coast/west coast thing…injecting a little Pacific into this Atlantic cosmology. Face it, staring off across rocky shores out to the tops of Olympian peaks 24/7 starts to stretch your sense of space…Gives you the wider vision. The feeling of being out on the frontier is also palpable, especially for a big city boy like me.
It all came together a little today when I thought how trippy it would be to get this job. The CBC piece notes that geology would be a key skill. (Damn, I picked the wrong degree. Who knew studying rocks would get you a job living on one in outer space. Go figure.)
Anyway, I feel like I’m psychologically preparing for some long space mission these days…Or maybe it’s just the trip I take in my own head. That, and my penchant for finding places that induce mildly euphoric vertigo. They’re everywhere I go…
Because of it all I am suddenly thinking about what the difference is between this rock and the one that has been crisply waxing about 240,000 miles above James Bay this week.
The answer?
Plenty. This rock is green, ever changing, vibrant, soaked in light and water and wind, and full of life. The moon? Not so much. Just thinking in those kinds of basic terms these days. Keeps things in broad perspective. Pacific perspective.
So maybe living on the moon is not in the cards for me…That’s OK…Right now my inner space feels like outer space just plenty. It’s like living on the moon…
