When you try to pick out anything by itself, you find it hitched to everything else in the universe.

John Muir

As a winter storm skirted the area today, Margaret and I drove through the desert from Palm Springs up to Twenty Nine Palms for a slow tour through the Joshua Tree National Park. California skies are rarely as dramatic as they were today.  The wind was fierce... colder and much more insistent than usual, rearranging clouds and kicking up a considerable sand storm east and south of Copper Mountain. When we got to the nondescript town of Twenty Nine Palms, we had to decide whether or not to continue the fifty-mile ride through the park.  Park Rangers cautioned that winds might create dangerous driving conditions. We went on anyway, and I’m glad we did.  The wind calmed considerably. Clouds huddled around the hills and mountains to make very satisfying photographs. Everything in the landscape, including the mountains and sky, belonged there.  Taking anything out of the picture would have left the image incomplete. John Muir’s words have never been more apt.

In the evening we joined other friends and family of Diana and Wayne in a singing celebration of their forty-fifth wedding anniversary.  John Muir’s observation about the connected of all things was exactly right for their life together and for this occasion, too.