I realize too, how little we know about or consider our own atmosphere; the very space in which we live.  I have been reading a surprisingly enjoyable book, The Cloudspotter's Guide, by Gavin Pretor-Priney, in which the author manages to put me in awe about the very most unassuming clouds of everyday. Therein lies the irony: books that draw on science and the philosophy, literature and observation of modern day can exact upon us a much greater appreciation for the simple elements of our world.  But this same modern world separates us from these elements.

For me, I have to ponder the heavens and the clouds.  If I was not granted the opportunity to ponder, from time to time, what would I be?

In the end, this is why I travel; to ponder.  It is what makes me a better father, a more engaged listener, and more excited about work and why I live life the way I do.  When I get up and go, I can separate myself from the complexities of everyday life, and live, momentarily, in a world of ideas.

Yesterday, the World Health Organization announced that a swine flu, born near Mexico City, has been quickly spreading, and that a worldwide pandemic may be imminent.  At the airports, this story was playing on every television screen.   The story: stay at home, don't travel.  Especially not to Mexico.

This is good news for me, because tomorrow as I walk in Arizona's Sonoran desert, I'll have a big blank, quiet canvas in which to ponder.

I have been pondering the atmosphere a lot lately, and precisely because this space in which we live has become so contentious in my country that it can freeze up a friendly dinner table conversation and send people into uproars.

For my entire adult life, I have had a curiosity about the subject of global warming.  Enough of a curiosity that I have managed to read the subject voraciously.  As a skeptic and an observer, I have spent considerable time trying to 'break the science' as a layman.  Over the years, too, I've become acquainted with scientists working on climate issues, and had the luxury of direct access to the men and women whose lives are the numbers and equations and field research of Planet Earth's greatest challenge.

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