Intaglios of Mud

 Objectively rain in a western state deserves the highest praise: it's necessary for any kind of Life, and it is so rare.  Subjectively rain puts you in the greatest mood,  When it ends, you walk around in a mild euphoria, relieved that the mud is going to dry up.  The Utah sky looked so clean-scrubbed:

 

I even enjoyed the warmth of the sun hitting my skin, instead of dreading it as I usually do.

Was it the rain?  Or was it bicycling with my little dog?  Or the new camping location?  Something put me in the mood to enjoy the heck out of normally unexciting sights.  What was so interesting about a tepee of fence stakes?

 This was more interesting to me than the iconic Utah postcards I could see from my front door:

 

 

The explanation is simple of course.  Generations of postcard manufacturers have made spectacular things expected, and therefore uninteresting, except to newbies.

 

There were other humble surprises to please me, such as a perfectly-formed and small "Mollie's nipple."  (Every western state has one.)

 

 Believe it or not, even tire tread pressed into the wet ground seemed pretty and pleasing to me:

 

 

Maybe you are thinking this is being too easy to please.  But let's play with it as a visual metaphor, rather than as a 'purdy picher.'  Imagine yourself as that wet ground, and that you are unusually receptive to impressions from the world around you.  This might be a good idea most of the time at most places.  But it is especially easy to get into the mood when traveling, because you have let go of the usual mundane and rigid habits of the workaday and routine world back home.

 

Long-suffering readers know that one of my favorite approaches to nature is in the word, autochthonous.  One way to look at the autochthonous is to see it as one of these impressions or intaglios in the past.