Snowy Roads (NOT a Metaphor for Life)

>_< I so should have brought my camera along on my drive back to Richmond today. Normally the turnpike is nothing to stare at (other than the amount of staring necessary for not crashing), but today, the sun was shining, the air was sparkling, and it was cold. There must have been a recent snowfall, too, the kind of snow that is made of big, fluffy, picturebook flakes, because the trees in the mountains were laced with white. I think the sight was impressive to me because of the sun, and the sharp rises and large expanses, and because the forest was deciduous, which eliminated green from the picture altogether...all that could be seen were thousands of bare branches encrusted with blinding snow. It was like driving through a cloud. Or a cauliflower. Or a gigantic Elizabethan ruff.

Anyway, I thought I'd be able to get a photo on google, but I was oh-so-wrong. The image will have to live on in words, and in my mind.

On an equally spacey note (this is what happens when I do essentially nothing for hours at a time by myself), how often do you think you look off into the distance? Living in a small town, working on a computer, and generally remaining within four walls, I don't think I hardly ever really look at anything that's more than 50 yards away...more often, probably less. But I think looking farther afield is quite interesting. I like perspective. I enjoy how distance dulls a view, and how everything is miniaturized, insignificant on the horizon. Did you know that - due to the earth's curve - on a beach looking out to sea, the horizon is about 3 miles away, depending on how tall you are? Whereas if you get onto a boat and climb up to the crow's nest 25 feet in the air, the distance you can see just about doubles. If the globe were a perfect sphere with one mountain, and that mountain were Mount Everest, on a clear day, a person could see about two-hundred miles from the top. Which now makes me wonder how far a person could see if they were standing on an infinitely long, infinitely flat plane.

I am getting boring. And it's getting late! First day of my last term of classes (undergrad...) tomorrow.