I had been aware that my breathing was somewhat more labored and forced throughout the day, but it took me aback on the climb up to the highest observation deck on Meteor Crater–they’re 4 accessible and a view further out via the complimentary tour. There’s no sign that says you’re nearly a mile up in altitude, that the air is as thin as floss, but you certainly can and will feel it. There was still a speck of sun in the sky when I got a full look at the devastation the meteor wrought on the land, both transfixing and foreign; simple and clean. Meteor Crater is a bowl in some ways, albeit a very large bowl, but a bowl nonetheless. Over time it had grown various shrubs and trees around the crater rim, but nothing in the interior. The video said that if the crater were a stadium, you could watch 20 football games simultaneously with an audience of 1 million people to give a sense of scale–American’s love measuring things in “football fields”.  It reminded me of the fact that we’re not alone here in this universe as a people, though it may sometime feel that way, and that there’s so much more than this Earth to which were inextricably tied. Being there also reminded me of something else.