Our View: Big and small | Fast and slow

Big and small
We’ve driven to Sacramento recently, and to Santa Rosa, of course, very often, and we have seen houses and people everywhere.  Yes, there are some open tracts of land not yet filled with cookie-cutter homes or big-box stores, as well as some tracts that will remain agricultural for at least another generation or two.  It’s often all to rare, though, to see truly undeveloped land any more.  Even around Sonoma, with our beautiful hills on both sides of the valley, a view at night from a surrounding hillside will show the surprisingly extensive development.
But fly the length of the state, and you’ll see huge stretches of undeveloped land. It’s been a few years, but we have driven across the country several times, and it’s remarkable what a big land we live in. Getting from one part to another used to take months, and now it takes the better part of a day, which makes it seem small, but it’s just as big as it’s always been.
We were reminded of this over these past three weeks, watching the Tour de France on television and seeing from the helicopters covering the race enormous swatches of forest range in France, Spain and Switzerland.
While e-mail and the Internet reduces all distances to mere seconds, no matter how tightly connected our societies become, this world – this nation – is still a big place.

Fast and slow
At many stages of our lives, life seems slow.  Teens are anxious to grow up (their loss, surely). Employees are impatient to advance. Young adults with crushes wonder, “Will he/she ever notice me?”  Retirement for many seems so far off: “Plenty of time to save.” Life seems slow.
In hindsight, life seems to have gone by pretty fast thus far. But more importantly, life can change in an instant.
We remarked on this about two years ago, following the tragic death of a young serviceman back home in Sonoma, how it takes a mere moment to turn lives upside down. Last week, the Sun carried an update on Brad Dreyer and Michael Kelley, the two involved in the late-night accident last Spring that left both men very seriously injured, with difficult prospects of recovery. A moment was all it took, and their lives – and the lives of their friends and families – were changed forever. Former Sonoma boy Cody Mittlemen has experienced that, as well, when he was mugged a few months ago.
Such moments remind all of us that we, too, are just a moment – an accident, a crime, an indiscretion, an ethical shortcut – from a fast change in our own lives.
Truly, it’s all about perspective. In our view, it’s still a big world, and slow is better.