Levitating On the City of "Stratos"

Central Utah.  Several times this summer I have camped at altitudes high enough to feel like I was in that episode in the third season of the original Star Trek ("The Cloud Minders"), about the city that levitated in the clouds.  The city was called Stratos, where people pursued purely intellectual and artistic pursuits.  Down on the surface of the planet the peasants dug away in the mines and did other things that provided the material basis of the civilization.

It brings a smile to my face to think of that episode when I am camp at a place like this.  But maybe there is more than a laughable pretentiousness to this experience.  Call it transcendence.  People flying on airplanes might feel that, too.  I even used to feel it when I reroofed my house, once.  You can feel liberated from the grubby details, the infinite clutter of things, and the useless busy-ness of life near the ground.

Actually, verticality is not the dominant quality here; 30 or 40 miles away is a continuous wall, where the red mesa/cliff topography of Utah transitions to the mountain range of central Utah.  Every time I look in that direction, the view seems "noble" and significant, rather than touristy-spectacular.  It is quite wonderful how, with patience, you can find satisfaction in certain views that is different from what you first expected.  

Satisfaction is different from entertainment.  It is superior, too.  For one thing, it lasts longer.

And speaking of levitating, the warm weather is hanging here for a day or two longer, past its time.  Soon it will collapse and I will be flushed south and downriver.  Every year it seems more important to me to resist the example of snowbirds and newbies as they rush to the overused and hackneyed locations in Arizona.

Horses in the city of Stratos keep a wary eye on my dog and me, mountain biking nearby.