The Questioning Librarian

In one of his final essays , Oliver Sacks wrote about what he felt after an accident left him dragging himself down a mountain with a broken leg. Memories of all sorts came to him, but he described an overwhelming feeling of gratitude through them all. It was surprising to read about, and I very much doubt that, were I in the same situation, gratitude is what I would feel. Being positive has always been hard for me. My mind latches on to what's wrong, and tends to dwell on it excessively. This is by no means unique to me; the human mind seems adept at remembering negative events, to the detriment of happier thoughts.  It is a terrible way of thinking about life, viewing it through this particular glass. There is, after all, much to be grateful for, even when things often seem so abysmally dark. Sacks was reflecting back over eight decades of life; I have nowhere near that amount of time to reflect upon, but even looking at the past few years is enough. It is hard for me to ima...

A night sky in Wyoming. Photograph by Eric Hines. I never tire of the view during my walk. When I have time, I head up into the development above the apartment where I live, where the relatively wealthy of the area live in what might be called a gated community without the gate. On the upper street, you can look out across the entire valley. The view is something I cannot imagine ever getting tired of, seeing the little town where I work from above, looking out at the seemingly endless hills stretching out into the distance. I often think of how these hills, part of the Appalachian Mountains, are impossibly ancient. The mountains were pushed up before the first dinosaurs started to walk the earth, rising when there were still trilobites crawling on ancient seabeds over 480 million years ago. They were there when the first fish walked onto land, standing as life radiated out from the seas. They saw the rise and extinction of the early reptiles, dinosaurs, the enormous mammals of ...