'and once i knew i was not magnificent, i could see for miles and miles and miles...'*

Do you ever find yourself listening to or looking at something so beautiful, so strangely right, that you almost cry from the crystalline perfect sadness of it? I know you know what I mean.



I had one of those moments just after six o'clock in the morning two weeks ago, in the midst of our cross-country train trip. The rattling of the rails, or that plaintively wailing whistle curling back along the length of the train to our sleeper car, or something else entirely dragged me abruptly out of sleep into the seeping gray of those minutes just before dawn.  Evan was still sound asleep in the bunk above me, and so I curled up with my ipod and my camera and I listened to this Bon Iver song* and watched the sun stretch its way over the train and across the golden flat miles of Kansas, rendered almost mythically, heartbreakingly beautiful by the creeping dawn light.

*Sadly, my magical moment was based in part on a misinterpretation of the lyrics.