An evening at False Kiva

My old friend Pratyush and I spent a couple of evenings clambering around canyons in Utah. The trip was motivated somewhat suddenly and impetuously by the surreal landscape in the photo above, a panoramic view shot from a fiendishly inaccessible cave half-way up a fairly sheer cliff. We absolutely had to go there to see it for ourselves. We went, we saw, and we were wonder-struck. For those that doubt the authenticity of the image, the view was perhaps even more spectacular in person than it seems in the photo. The Universe continues to conspire to amuse, amaze and bemuse me.

Per aspera ad astra

(in our context, this means: over really rough roads to a really large number of stars)

Dropping down from a Utah sky
Thousands of shining
Pin-pricks of light below
Tracing in flights of geometry
Meaning into the desert rocks
`We shall overcome', they chant
In chorus

Playing cavemen in a lost eyrie
In a cleft unsought, untouched by Time
Billions of lamps fill an endless void
Silent. They have no stories to tell
The night resounds with their silent shrieking
`Forty-two', the stars are screaming
`Forty-two!'