Summer time is real time, and, yet—really? I'm living in that pocket called privilege where June and July are travel months. That 13th century phrase we humans relied on when farmers, mostly all, does not quite apply. The phrased words “it's high time” refer to our sun's direct vertical line above, the day's high point, solar wise, to get something, anything done. Beyond this noon hour, depending what geography you might call home, limited hours are available before dark time makes projects more challenging, especially for farmers, and we human species lived a few centuries as primarily agricultural dwellers.

In modernity we chastise ourselves and others that “it's high time” the effort happened, whatever the goal is. We often perceive that we are running behind, or out of time to get the done done and now(!) before time runs out. In other words, it's high time we get our **bleep** together. In the quiet hours, when I'm not wild on errands, I admit that's unlikely to occur in my one brief life time. Getting my biz together. How then will I spend my time, before and after the clock's top number 12 at high noon?

Grateful I have been this summertime for the Colorado River, her determined direction gave such vibrant context while I slept next to her four starlit nights and three sweltering days. We'll never be exclusive she and I, for most anyone can stay close for $18 a night at Mather Campground in the Grand Canyon National Park. Yes, I'm checking my privilege that not everyone has a car and other economic resources to arrive there. Also, reservations are required minimum three months in advance. Perhaps intriguing that in a few areas I do have my **bleep** together.

Could be that a few others do as well (having made their reservations early, too) because as time stretches across 365 linear days, all those 24 hour quilts sewn together and totaling one year, over five million folks will visit the Grand Canyon, annually. Not all camped at the same time nearby where I was.

Some have economic means to stay at more upscale hotels, motels, inns, lodges, and resorts—so many are visible along the drive to the Grand Canyon park entrance, where an additional $35 is charged simply to be on the premises. I forgot that cost until right now. So, if you are on bicycle or walking then $18 for one evening's time to camp and $35 to arrive fully. Isn't time money, after all? Or was I mislead?

Chances are I have been because one starry insight the Colorado River flows to our awareness surface is blips in time, how we humans are those. Listening one mile above her canyon on the South Rim she has a churning whisper, a decibel energy hearing her history in the countless visual stepping stones she carved. She begins at 10,000 feet in the Colorado Rocky Mountains and continues descending until the Gulf of California welcomes her finally home. Every rain or snow drop ever fallen into the Colorado River has only this one goal—to reach ocean waters—that is, wide open freedom.

Each second, minute, hour, day, week, year, decade and century she has allowed no obstacle to deter. Starting at this uplift height, her purpose driven waters—now calm, now tumultuous—are designed to carve rock to achieve desired arrival. The mud and boulders and trees and natural debris falling into her roaring momentum act as sandpaper or as muscle behind her knife-like directional river.

She has been carving the Grand Canyon for five to seven million years. And continues digging deeper at the thickness of one piece of paper a year. She is taking her time. As a human blip in time, the Colorado River taught me this summer to surrender into time's mystery, however long my “it's high time” might take. As long as I am pointed in the right direction, who knows how long a project's flow might last?

If we stay on the same page, as in this pictured horizontal lying-flat piece of paper, we can agree, next, with geologists that one vertical page, a page in a book, equals a million years. That's the news. So, our earth is a 5,450 page book or 5,450 million years old (or young if optimism rules).

And we have much evidence that rock history sourced over all these millions of years is in proximity to the Grand Canyon's layers, horizontal and vertical and diagonal to the Colorado River. In this way, even the river herself is relatively new on the scene compared to adjacent stones. Some of planet earth's first living creatures, the trilobytes, are fossils discovered in these rock basins.

Besides staying the flowing course to achieve whatever the purpose is, the Colorado River taught me that my own effort can remain new in the moment, even as many historical currents flow parallel to my work. In a few books, I have read this as a phrase for being mindful—living in the here and now.

Before I fell asleep in my one-woman tent, I stared long and well at bright stars shining above. Chilly air I welcomed for high-time temps (noon, that is) scaled to near 100 degrees Fahrenheit. And I laughed softly to myself at four nights and three days being such a brief interlude, a summertime gift to experience nature's breathtaking beauty. The IMAX movie playing in a local village detailed that if you had the choice to drive the Colorado River at 70 miles per hour, the trip requires four hours—her total distance is 277 miles. I never wish to experience the Grand Canyon in a car. Standing physically to absorb, through sensory immersion, is the truest way to say I visited the Colorado River's home, for a brief time.