BLUE TRUE DREAM OF SKY (2022)

This piece is part of my National Park Series.

Commissioned by the Grand Valley State University New Music Ensemble with a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.

It was June of 2021 and the traumatic year-long isolation of the Covid-19 pandemic was finally receding. We were starting to venture out into the world again, but with lots of uncertainty. For me, the first trip out of my shell was to Great Basin National Park. It was spring, and as I eagerly reacquainted myself with trails and mountains, I found that my long seclusion heightened my awareness of everything... growth, light, sound, space, momentum, ... life. The simplest of things took on a halo of significance born out of long absence. It was as if my senses were awakening anew. I heard the words of E. E. Cummings saying:

now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened

We all had this experience. It has been part of our shared journey through this difficult time. Mine could have happened anywhere, but Great Basin provided a particularly potent setting for this rebirth. With its ancient trees, tenacious plant life, and impossible cave creatures, the very air seemed to be pulsing with a palpable vibration of potential and emergence.

The poem by Cummings kept reverberating in my mind and became a sort of anthem to me while I hiked, sat, looked, and listened. The first few lines read:

i thank You God for most this amazing
day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

There is much to love about any trip to a national park... and many specific things to amaze and inspire at Great Basin. But I will always think of it as the place where I first emerged from our collective cocoon and felt the wonder of art, nature, and life flow back into me. My own "blue true dream of sky."