Pappa Hardy's Musings on Life.

Well, my latest experience with Southwest Airline was not all that bad. I have had trouble getting home using this aircraft, but the most recent one was quite interesting. Here we were, flying in an aircraft hurdling through the skies at speeds much faster than you can imagine. Our lead stewardess, after having given us all of the information we need in order to know our safety protocol, broke into a song, both entertaining us and also giving us all of the safety information we need. It was really quite interesting, and entertaining as well.

When I was a kid, we sure went on a lot of camping trips and I enjoyed it so much. It is interesting that over time your tastes seem to change, and of course, age has something to do with it as well. I know find that the kind of a camping out I enjoy the most is being in a nice motel room or stateroom on a ship, and the cooking I enjoy the most is when someone is serving me something I or Bonnie didn’t have to cook, and we don’t have to clean up the dishes. I do have to say, sleeping on a nice bed is much nicer than sleeping on the hard, cold, ground. I enjoy the new type of camping out.

My trip to Wyoming and South Dakota brought back to me a legacy of history that I share in because of my family’s heritage. We visited many sites along the Mormon Trail, including such places as Martin’s Cove and the Mormon Trail. I have wonderful ancestors, who sacrificed everything they had to come to a new land and forge a new life. I don’t think many of us these days would be willing to leave a nice, warm house, and leave behind all of our possessions and risk family, life, and comfort for a new found religion and the promise of Zion. I would hope that I had that courage, but don’t know because I am not sure that I have ever been tested.

This trail, which I have seen, winds through Nebraska, Iowa, Wyoming, and Utah. It is a trail of faith and hardship. It is a trail of the forging of faith. It is a wonderful place. It is a somber place. I pray that I will be equal to my ancestors in the living of my faith.

I was reminded the other month when we visited Cheyenne that there is hot, and then there is hot. Cheyenne, in the end of July, can get hot. It was hot enough that if you were in a room, and had no air conditioning, and the wind was not blowing (an unusual event), then it was feeling uncomfortable. Of course, that brought back feelings of an earlier time, when it was truly hot. It was truly hot in Las Vegas, when taking a stroll at 10pm in the evening was like visiting the neighborhood oven. A breeze felt like someone was opening the oven door. I guess that I am never going to feel that comfortable when I visit that state. I like Cheyenne. It is a nice place to be, particularly in the dead of summer.

I was recently in Wind Cave National Park. I was on a tour of part of the Wind Cave called “The Garden of Eden”. We were travelling through the cave underground, viewing the many natural wonders associated with that place. It was fantastic. I was thoroughly enjoying myself and the opportunity to explorer. It would have been better had I had the skills and equipment to do it on my own with a few friends. The caves were gorgeous, the stillness and the other worldliness of the scene were just great.

As I have got older, I have lost some of the push to be an explorer, but at heart, I love doing new things, seeing new places, and experiencing the unknown. I would love to go into space, to do new things that few have ever done. I am an explorer, and to stay young I must continue to explorer. I can never allow myself to become complacent and not wanting to do things that others have not done. Perhaps that is why I ran for political office a year ago. I needed to be part of an elite, and part of a group of people who push the frontiers.

Is this time in America’s history the Calm before the storm, or the storm before the calm? I am sure many people hope and wish that the conditions that we are experiencing now, as a nation, are perhaps the Storm before the Calm. I fear that it is the Calm before the Storm.

Our financial markets are currently in chaos. I fear that this is just the beginning of many more challenges that we are going to face. For too long we have been living on borrowed time in our country. We have lived on the charity of others as a nation of debtors. We have a national debt that is unimaginable. As individuals, we live a life style that has been enabled by foreign investors. We have Social Security and Medicare systems that are near bankrupt and will not be able to handle the demands placed upon them by the baby boomers (my generation) when we all start to retire. Yes, I fear that it is the Calm Before the Storm. What kind of a legacy have we left for our children, and our grand children? I hope that it is better than I fear.

There are times when you just can’t sleep. You wake up in the middle of the night and sleep flees your body, and then you have to do something else. Today is one of those nights. The challenges that we fact today way heavily on your mind, and sometimes the mind just will not let you rest. The challenges range from things I can’t control, the economy, the country’s situation, to things closer to home, like work and other things. I hate sleepless nights.

I love the smell of rain. There is nothing that is more a sensual experience for me than to have had a long stretch of dry weather in the west and then have a rain storm come upon us. Because it is so dry, you can smell the water, smell the rain when the weather changes. I am so grateful that the good Lord has blessed us with these small experiences in life that allow us to appreciate nature and the great beauty that exists in this world.

Any more it is not enough to sit and watch a movie, attend a concert, or just watch TV. We have become a society of participators, but only when we can do it electronically and from afar. People find it harder to interact with people, but they don’t mind interacting with people through a separate medium. I don’t know what this is going to do to our families, our country, or our world.

In school we learn about the Great American Desert. As a resident of the Great State of Utah I am also aware of the fact that we live in a desert. However, I don’t think it gets driven any more forcefully than when you drive across the states of Utah and Nevada. We recently drove to Yosemite National Park across Nevada, and it was amazing how you could drive what seemed like thousands of miles (actually maybe 150) non stop, and hardly see a soul. There were no bathrooms, no nothing. There were very little in the way of plants. That is a sobering thought. I have seen the Great American Desert.