503 square miles, six blocks or so—perhaps one square mile. Most of us are removed from what’s on the other side of the country, never mind the world. Most buy what we are told. And gather information without knowledge, nor proper investigation. Some of us ask questions. Some of us may pry even more. Few of us listen to all sides or at least make the attempt to. I do know this because I reside in a human vessel. I also know this because all our humanness has flaws.
As news articles and sound bites roll out, much of it is for distraction. The distraction is to sell an idea, a fear, a persona, or perhaps a product that everyone will need by the time they reach their fifties. To me, all those distractions are a cover up to make others wealthy. Sometimes they can make us wealthy, even unintentionally. Yet, we must not buy into too much of those distractions, for it takes away our health. And then what do you have—once you’ve been raped of your health?
When the doctor who delivered me reminded my mother about how people lose health. I was sitting in his exam room, it was 1970. At the time I was about age eight. He, Dr. Loman stated, “You know if people didn’t worry so much there’d be less heart-attacks and ulcers.” Dr. Loman was partially correct in his statement, and he knew it. He’d witnessed quite a bit by age seventy back then. I knew he was correct, even at my young age. For me, it was a logical conclusion. And even today, it mostly holds true.
So, on day six of my second solo cross-country drive across the United States, things that now were within a day’s drive had calmed down and I had some answers. The question I had was: How many square miles is Los Angeles? The answer is 469.49 square miles. However, it depends on whose measurement is regarded. One recently reported figure in the news stated “503 square miles…”.1 That was an apparent rounding up from 502.7 square miles. The most recent measurement done vastly different was 469.49 square miles.2 Either way, most media and even federal government officials of certain partisan groups would like the American people to believe it is less than one square mile with millions of people residing there. However, that is untruthful. And the area most in the news this day covered about six blocks, and the actions taken by the recent White House Administration (if you can call it that) were a severe overreach and once again disregarded the Constitution. Which in turn, wasted money that could have provided some children school lunches, among other things. The situation was to be and absolutely could have
1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Los_Angeles
2 https://search.brave.com/search?q=Los+Angeles+Square+miles&source=desktop&summary=1&conversation=ff6b9697ad1649161f92df
been handled locally. Yet, we now have the puppet of the hammer and sickle leading our people.
The bombastic misuse of power has harmed the people of the United States. Too, it takes little to destroy democracy as well as trust. It takes so much more to build a democracy and quite often trust can take even longer if at all.
Putting all this in perspective was what hung on my mind as I ran my nearly ten mile run this day. The positive distractions of the day were the new construction sites on the western side of Old 91, just before The Black Mountains. The sky was picture-perfect. The blue skies held out hope in the hot sun that I’d not felt. I’d ignored the thin air. I’d not noticed the elevation of nearly 6,000 feet. There was no pressure, only to run, to hike about town afterwards and to find a new eatery I’d not tried before.
Outside of that I wondered as I prayed and ran: ‘How many people know the truths about Los Angeles? About their school system? About their further education system? About how they conduct police investigations? How many people have run through a multitude of cities at all sorts of hours of the day and the night? How many people run? How many people run or walk without a GPS or a cell phone? Something telling them what to do?’
As I ran up the side of one hill in the direction of The Black Mountain range, I nodded and sometimes waved to the men putting in new cables, fiber optics, gas lines and the like. Some stopped and stared. The roads were paved with dirt and rocks strewn across them. I got to the top of one area, paused and looked out, then down. It was a small suburban town unconnected to where I had now paused my run. I ran back down the nearly quad crushing hill. I got to the bottom and swooped to my left going north, up past the Walmart and Home Depot and onto Main Street, past a couple strip centers to my north, as I’d turned and ran west once more. I turned around to go northwest, back into the little town; then I gradually ran uphill once again. The crest of the hill looked as though an ocean was just over the ridge of the hill. However not possible—I was in the heart of Utah at least 400 miles away from the nearest ocean.
As I neared the top of the hill, to my left there was the beginning of Iron County Technical High School, the Iron County School District resided on either side of the road there. And in front of me was a playground. The entire area leading up to the schools were calm, quiet, suburban in nature. The houses were neatly aligned with businesses, tree-lined of Blue Spruces, Aspens and others in solitude. Once at the top I circled back down towards Main Street and back on to an extension of Old 91 only going north away from the busyness of the upper portion of the town’s center. Eventually, I’d loop around and run east to southeast nearing residential areas and a church, then back to the hotel.
After breakfast, I checked my car’s oil level which was fine. Bugs and dust crusted practically all angles of the vehicle. I then took a walk of the town, after I crossed over the old broken bridge that at one time connected Old 91 to where the construction was now being built. The road before the bridge was filled with some high grass, the dirt lay now at the top just after the bridge as the road was no more. It wound down sloppily filled with all sorts of sand, dirt and rocks. Soon I’d reached the bottom where the right and across the way was the Home Depot. Across and to the left and down aways was the State Liquor Licensing Center. I walked to my right and crossed to where there was a sidewalk by the Home Depot, then the Walmart shopping areas. I walked about a half mile and found a coffee shop with chairs and tables in the shade. It was busy, yet pastural. By the time I’d arrived back at the hotel, I’d walked over three miles, I rested.
Before I knew it, it was nearing dinner. I hiked over the old bridge and broken road to the local Applebee’s. I wanted something different and had never been to the chain. I can say I was pleasantly surprised. I had half rack of ribs and eight ounces of salmon, it was splendid. I hiked back, and eventually tuned into a nature channel.---Jody-Lynn Reicher
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