Driving at night, you can lose track of time. The horizon is only as far as your headlights’ reach. The outlook is short range. The centre line draws you into the darkness and pretty soon you’re in another zone; the flow state of a continuous present. Time just goes.
The fastest vehicles spend most of their time completely still. Rockets stand waiting in negative time. At T minus zero, time begins. They fly for the briefest of moments, one hundred kilometres straight up, 11.2 kilometres per second. Ten long minutes.
Mountains have a trajectory as well. Their stillness is an illusion, they swell and crash like waves. 500 million years of flux have brought them to this frozen moment. They have all the time in the world.
