Sometimes I feel like I live in a painting

Today, as I was biking home from visiting SAMHC (a crisis center for people in Tucson-- I've been slowly but surely visiting other agencies in the city to familiarize myself with what resources are available, for my own education and so I don't feel too absurd referring people to places I've never seen myself), I had the pleasure of feeling dwarfed by the Catalina Mountains to my north and the Tucson Mountains to the west.

I think one of my favorite moments in life, is when I happen to be biking down Speedway (the road our house/street is off of) right around sunset as I was today, with a beautiful view of the silhouetted Tucson Mountains. The intersection itself is far from picturesque, there are dusty empty lots to the north and south of this point, and telephone lines/electrical wires galore... but the mountains and the sunset make it all not matter as much.

It reminds me a lot of Annie Dillard, in her book "Holy The Firm":

That they bear their own unimaginable masses and weathers aloft, holding them up in the sky for anyone to see plain, makes them, as Chesterton said of the Eucharist, only the more mysterious by their very visibility and the absence of secrecy. They are the western rim of the real, if not considerably beyond it. If the Greeks at looked at Mount Baker all day, their large and honest art would have broken, and they would have gone fishing, as these people do. And as perhaps I one day shall.

And so sometimes I feel like I live in a painting, and I pinch myself but it's real.

Below are some pictures from my life recently--

The Weepies came to Tucson! The Monday before Thanksgiving Jen, Kaitlyn, Meredith and I went to go see them at Plush-- they were fabulous, and well worth not getting a full nights sleep.

This is a picture of the Rocky Mountains taken from my plane ride back from CT to AZ. I was surprised with a trip home for Thanksgiving :)

Tucson decorates for Christmas. Did I mention it's weird to see Christmas trees when it's 75 and sunny outside?

Oh TUson! Need I say more?

On Saturday Jeff and I went to a farmer's market, where we prepared a worm compost bin learned all about growing garlic and sampled some local foods- like sunchokes (apparently you can eat the root of some sunflowers)! When we got home we were inspired to finally plant some of the seeds Jeff had gotten from the Food Bank awhile ago, hopefully at least some of them will sprout...