My friend Mike shared a joke with me about the last big oil crisis when the country decided everyone should drive at 55 mph. The punchline is that driving across Texas at 55 will give you some insight into eternity. It’s a good punchline, but it won’t really help you get your head around eternity. Eternity isn’t any time at all. Infinity isn’t a quantity, just like nothing. There isn’t more nothing or less. No more eternity or less. It’s not a long time. It has its uses as an idea, but people get a little crazy trying to think about it.

 I suppose the upside is that if you’re going to hell for eternity, and if it’s nothing, who really cares?  

 About the last thing you see leaving Texas and entering New Mexico is El Capitan, an imposing peak that makes Mt. Katahdin seem a little puny. It is the remains of a 460 million-year-old reef that stood on the shores of the Delawarian Basin, part of an ancient inland sea. El Capitan had been underwater and then slowly thrust back up above the West Texas highway by long, slow, and impressive forces.

And then as soon as you enter New Mexico you are invited into the spectacularunderworld of Carlsbad Caverns. I’ve already been, twice, and it was too hot to leave Dolly alone in the car for long, so I passed on the third opportunity.

 Mile after mile of geology inviting, insisting, forcing itself on you and posing questions. How did it all get this way? Questions of time.  The machinations and chemistry of the planet seem closer to the surface in the Southwest than they do in Maine.

 After a night in an idyllic forest above Alamogordo I dropped  down the canyon highway onto the flat desert plane below — an astonishing descent of about 4,500 feet.  This desert is where they blew up the first A bomb. Here’s where they test missiles. White Sands at the south end of the range and the black lava beds of the Valley of Fires at the other end. Geologic Salt and Pepper Shakers and with Buck Rogers in the middle.  

Sorting out the time lines of geology is a little tricky. My brain has a little trouble teasing out the difference between 10,000 years and 10 million years. Or for heaven’s sake, 4.5 billion years. Numbers get a little slippery when your expiry is about four score and ten.

 I was thinking about a certain number as I stopped at Pie Town, New Mexico.

The waitress told me the original inhabitant of Pie Town made dry pies for the men who drove cattle through here, hence the name Pie Town. 

Pi is one of those numbers that is useful, but never ends. It’s an approximation. I approximately arrived there on Pi Day, March 14 — 3.14. I actually arrived the day after St. Patrick’s Day — on Wednesday 3.18. I’m guessing if you used 3.18 to calculate the circumference of a circle you wouldn’t be too far off. Not precision, but not bad.

 At the cafe I took the advice written on the wall and had my dessert first. I ordered a whole six-inch homemade apple pie and a sweet tea. It turned out I didn’t have room for the appetizer or the main course. The Pie Town Cafe was a lively spot. There were two men, one with a Red Sox hat and one with a Yankees Hat, having a debate from two different tables. They were three time zones from the East Coast. 

  When the Red Sox fan and his wife left the Yankee fan broke out a different contentious subject.

“How could anybody possibly eat mustard on a hamburger?”

According to this former Long Islander, mustard — Gulden’s — was clearly for hot dogs and ketchup (no specific brand) was for hamburgers.  After he paid his bill and left a tip, the waitress told him she puts mustard on her hamburgers. He just shook his head and left.

   A lanky fellow with an angular face came in sporting a very big cowboy hat. I could only estimate the circumference. His hat was complimented and he said he got it in Fort Davis from the Limpia Hat Makers. Said it was the best money he ever spent.  

On my way through Fort Davis I had been tempted to stop in their small shop, but I knew better. He was in Pie Town fine tuning a nearby antenna that keeps GPS satellites telling your phone where you are. This was all about modern precision timing.  

They didn’t have any Pie Town T-shirts in my size so I paid up and hit the road. Before I reached Omega, maybe 20 miles west of Pi, I pulled off to make a drawing of one of the intricate geologic constructs that have been flying by my van on every side at 75 mph.

  As I sat there sorting out the shadows, the cracks and the crannies of the face of the butte, a bluebird and his mate started flitting around this van. It was a special treat for me. Almost an omen — although no one had yet asked me the name of my “rig”, I had silently named it The Bluebird.   

  They were so lovely. I picked up my cell phone and put it in camera mode and waited.  I had all the time in the world. With all the miles of rumination about geology and time it occurred to me to wonder how long a bluebird lived. Finally he obliged me, landed, sat on the mirror of the driver’s side door and looked me in the eye. Certainly the length of our lives determines how we live and how we interact with time, but so do these useful little approximations of infinity.

   I have already logged my four score and ten, but I’ve probably got at least a bluebird’s lifetime ahead of me — if I take care of myself. So this is my bluebird time. A lifetime ahead of me. It’s more comforting than eternity.