Issue date: 1/26/05 Section: Opinion

I 'm thinking about this column, my first of the new semester, from one of the most beautiful vantage points in the world. I am at a high point in the Yosemite Valley. To my East is the savage granite face of El Capitan. Further down the valley, the gentle slope of Half Dome rises up from the like of the white snow-encrusted thumb of God, ripped apart by the slow moving hands of geological time.

Thousands of feet below me, a recent snowstorm has blanketed the valley with a pristine white carpet. The frosted pines offer me a post-holiday celebration and this day offers the first sunshine I have seen in two weeks. I can admit that sun is my god and depression can sometimes become my wintertime companion. Except here, all cliches aside, my troubles, my concerns, everything that I have ever lost a moments sleep over, disappear like smoke.

Yet, I can't help but wonder about the state of our nation. We are embroiled in a war that no one seems to want to claim or apologize for. The recent Condoleeza Rice confirmation hearings are evidence of that. People are dying on both sides and I fear that the time will come when no one will remember what the fighting was about.

I'm wearing snowshoes and I pad my way through the soft snow, working up a slight sweat, watching the sunlight bounce off the glass-encrusted shrubs. It's clear to me that if President George Bush and Osama Bin Laden decided to meet here sometime to discuss their differences, that maybe things in the world would be different. Because all of what Bush is about is Bin Laden. And likewise with Bin Laden and Bush. Metaphorically, of course. It's my hope that somehow things might change.

Their dialogue is easy to imagine. Bush might ask almost absurdly, "Can I get you some goat cheese? Have you ever seen anything so beautiful?" Bin Laden would of course say, "The valley is one of the most beautiful I have ever seen. In Pakistan they have some of the tallest and most beautiful mountains ranges in the world. I have spent a lot of time there recently. Cheese? Why not?"

This tentative agreement might be the first time the two leaders had ever agreed on anything, the cheese notwithstanding. Clearly, their politics will never coincide, but even disparate men can agree on nature and her beauty. The idealist in me wishes that this agreement would follow them down the mountain, into the valley.

But as sure as the Central Valley fog that will enshroud my ride back to Sacramento, these two men who might agree in principle on the aesthetics of a region will separate with a handshake and a smile. Those same hands will make phone calls to their generals in the evening--then they will raise the guns again to start the next cycle of killing.

Art Ballard can be reached at opinion@statehornet.com

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