Random Thoughts, Flowers and Rocks

It’s springtime in Afghanistan. The weather is warming. The fields are turning green and this week beautiful flowers began to spring up just outside the fence line. It’s funny, the first time I drove past a large patch of the blossoms I saw red and white ones side by side and my first thought was… someone must have marked off a minefield I hadn’t noticed. It took me a second to realize I was looking at flowers and not rocks painted to delineate a mine field. It’s rather odd being somewhere where that thought pops into one’s head so easily. The flowers really are beautiful, red, white or pink, I think they are wild tulips. I like being places where flowers define the time of year. Japan was very much like that. Southern California is as well. I’m missing the poppies and lupine this year.

I’m curious how this landscape will change over the next months. When I arrived there was nothing covering the fields but dirt. It didn’t look as if anything could, or ever had, grown here. Now the snow is melting leaving the mountains brown but the fields are turning. At least if I have to work on such a fugly base I can still see the fields next door and the nearby mountains. It’s calming. Even on this butt ugly base some of the trees that looked dead and gone are blossoming. These poor retched trees that looked like they belonged warming some Afghan’s mud house have become beautiful explosions of fuchsia. I suppose it’s a good lesson. One should not look out at the world and assume it will always look that way.