Unlimited Horizon

Dietrich finished eating early and went into the other room to make a rocket contraption and sit by the fire. He listened to Elliott and me talking about the atmosphere and going through it to get to space, offering up corrections when needed. Then Elliott came up with this:

"Here's how I go to space. I just go to the end of the lake where the sky goes zup zup (cutting with his hand a right angle) and I put my head like this (tucking his chin as if to crawl in a tunnel) and reach out this high (stretching his arm up) and there! I'm in space."

How many times have I watched the horizon on Lake Michigan -- on a bike, running, driving (carefully), sitting on the beach -- and watched the end of the Earth as Elliott described? As I stared out at its beauty, its seeming infinity, all I could do was allow myself to awe at it. The horizon never looked the same from day to day, even during the steamy summer when a haze loomed over it or when the foggy late winter drizzle denied it was even there. It spoke silently of possibility, but did I really believe it? Elliott noticed it, too, bouncing along in the Burley, playing on the beach, climbing on the rocks at the Point. For me it was a matter of beauty and perspective; for Elliott the horizon as he described tonight was just out of reach but it holds the possibility of another world.

Now that I think of it, the world Elliott imagined may have also been inspired by a clever book called Katie Meets the Impressionists (James Mayhew) where a girl visiting an art museum climbs into the paintings and becomes part of the scene (sometimes finding herself in more than one painter's world). Whatever his muse, the image he gave is powerful. Why not just go to the end of the lake, reach into the horizon, and get where you want to be?