The Needful

Do The Needful; A mantra driven into me by the situation vs. my desires.  At times, I've felt the neeful tugging at me, tearing at me; forcing me from space to needful space.  It requires my presence, but not my mind. It's forced my being into the canyons and dark corridors of modern human procedure....but I've always managed a part of me soaring above it all for all but the briefest of moments....until the past month.  

I moved my home.  I have not moved in years....and one never knows how much crap they have...until they have to go digging in the dirt of a past left behind; estranged, embittered and incomplete.  After two weeks of the needful defined by a life now past; I put my foot down and drew up a plan for my needful.....

I can always count on the bike to take me away from the needful...and into my own needful.  In my new backyard, this means there will be more rocks and there will be climbs......long climbs....

Turning around, I admire the view of the needful I leave behind for a brief moment......

.......and focus instead of my needful which I seek.......a place exploding in life after a fall rain, reviving a beautiful carpet of green tearing into fractured rock, one season at a time.

The true needful looms on the skyline with the path etched in dirt far below.  As the sun crests the ridgeline, shadows highlight the growing shafts of sunlight, capping the tops of saguaro.

As many times as I've climbed this path...I never noticed someone else's needful, stamped into a chalkboard which will far outstrip in eons, the message which will last but for a moment.....I appreciate the sentiment nonetheless.

Breathing hard at the top of one pass....I stop and realize that I stand astride a dividing line.  To my back and west, the needful calls out in telephonic soundscapes, traffic noise and customer dissatisfaction.  To my east and in front of me....a barren land full of possibility, defined only by my needful.  The desire to reach out to the next ridgeline on the horizon....4-Peaks.....calls to me strongly.  If only I had the time....but I did once...and so I shall again.

Realizing the folly of my thoughts, I turn back to climb up another pass....stopping only to photograph the beauty of switchbacks traversing across the morning landscape.

Before the final descent back down into the needful, I appreciate my needful one last time....and promise that I'll be back soon.