Holiday superpowers

Telluride Daily Planet, Friday, December 20, 2024

“Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life’s coming attractions.” – Albert Einstein

Almost 40 years ago during off-season, before it was monitored or had many — if any — rules or restrictions as a climbing area, we pulled into the Indian Creek Campground, about three hours from here. My companion, a climber, needed a bilayer, and I agreed to go on the excursion, not climb necessarily, but hang out. It’s what I and a lot of other women did back then: We tried to keep up. Some became climbers, and others, myself included, did not.

In that moment, however, everything – all of it — was new to me. Our diminutive Toyota truck, equipped for sleeping and bopping around in, had a mattress and a camp stove for the purpose of heating up 1) the espresso machine; and 2) the all-purpose, breakfast, lunch, snack and dinner burrito. What else did we need? Water was probably in plastic gallon jugs, and the rest was minimalism at its 80s finest.

These were the early days of my life in this area. The drive and look of the landscape took my breath away and then filled me up with icy-fresh air. Delicious. I’d never experienced anything like the desert southwest, its vertical sheaths of red sandstone, sagebrush and cactus turf and ever-so-bluebird skies. This lonely, tender, majestic, and overwhelming landscape yanked me out of my head and got me right in the gut.

At the parking lot, the wind started picking up like crazy. Gary met a climbing friend – I think we were the only two cars there – and set out with his gear, leaving me to wander around, which I was very happy to do until the wind picked up and an irritating dusty sand started coming up in swirls, then began to blow every which way. It did not take long for me to feel it in my teeth and hair and on every part of my body.

At this point, the novel I’d brought with me – a newly published Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry – started sounding really good. I could read and wait for the wind to die down. I could be cozy in that truck, so beautifully cozy even if it was just a spring-dead bucket seat.

So, as the two boys occupied themselves climbing cracks and ripping their fingers apart, I opened the first of 900 pages of my book, wind and sand rocking the truck. Tucking into that story hard, the world — time, noise, and the sun in the sky – fell away.  

I just sat there and read, met great characters and entered a different landscape of epic proportions, of heartbreak, tragedy, adventure, learning, and endless spaces. My imagination, already revved up at the base of the Indian Creek cliffs, launched into overdrive. Everything opened up. Hours later, having to pump up the stove and check in with the chalk-handed team, I came up for air. The whole thing, cliffs, cracks and the movie inside my head, was a dream, and, it turned out, a very important one in my life.

There is nothing like imagination, friends. It gets us out of holes, and carries us off to realms we’d not ever thought of thinking of. It liberates us from our narrow patterns and habitual thoughts, widens our five senses and starts even to fuel the sixth. It leads us inward and outward, upward and downward and helps us reconfigure who we are as energetic creatures potentially expanding, right along with the universe. It is our birthright as humans.

According to the National Institutes of Health, imagination is the brain’s capacity to innovate new ideas by merging sensory experience with abstract thought. It is used in problem solving, creativity, personal transformation, mind-body health, and escape from difficulty. It feeds our ability to empathize. From writing a poem (or reading one) and solving a mathematical equation to healing ourselves and envisioning a brighter future, it is all imagination’s purview.

So this holiday season, if you, like me, are slipping on a metaphor of ice, shoveling a walk, warding off loneliness, gorging on sweets, waking up at 3 a.m., saying a Hail Mary, having a fight, or in any way mislaying your connection to magic  – let’s consider availing ourselves again to the power of the imagination, to stretching the fabric our lives and making it richer and more elegant. Let’s soften and dream.

Because imagination lights our fire on fire and blast us off, even when we don’t know how we much we need it. It is truly a human superpower and we can, at any time, opt in.