Star Gazing

​ Original post: May 4, 2017

Yesterday, I had time to sit with my friend Brady in front of the Mexican restaurant not far from my house. Curiosity had gotten the best of me. We watched crews setting up for filming a movie starring Robert Redford. But Bob wasn't there. A white-haired woman sat down with us and started talking excited about how she has been chasing Robert Redford and Joe Montana. She has no kids, two failed marriages, social security, and lives in small town Ohio. Stargazing is her thing. 

I tried to act as if I were much cooler than her, in my florescent orange jacket, shades meant for a younger face, makeup packed on-just in case he looks into the crowd and smiles at me. In my imagination, we'd have a moment, Bob and me. He would look at me in the same way he looked at Barbara Striesand in The Way We Were. He would be compelled to stop filming long enough to strike up a conversation with me. 

I would remind him that I'd sent my manuscript to the Sundance Institute, addressed him, thinking there might be a chance he'd read it. After all, we both are passionate about Utah. The one of golden aspens, wild horses, pristine mountain snows, and black-winged magpies that take flight, rising suddenly from the precipice we stand on. Sending the manuscript seemed worth a try, however doomed to fail it might have been. Months later, I received a thick package with the kindest rejection I never got from any agent. It didn't hurt. 

Yesterday with blue skies the color of Utah spring, I left the stargazer and Brady to walk one short block toward Dixie Chili where there seemed to be lots of activity. As I drew closer, I noticed people with their phones poised in front of their faces, in the only way people seem to see things these days, through a tiny screen. 

Then, coming out of an old bank building was Mr. Redford in a sky blue jacket and Khakis. I might never be this close to him again geographically. But the way he walked when he wasn't acting, how he slouched his hands in pants pockets, the octogenarian round to his shoulders, reminded me of the other place I call home-Utah.

​That Utah where snowflakes can be the size of fists. That place where Mount Timpanagos can be slate gray, black or purple depending on how the sun hits. The place where a band of wild horses trace along topography the color of linen sheets snapping on a clothes line. Or perhaps the place where a night sky, away from city lights, can be ripe for star gazing.