My daughter and I stepped outside to behold the mountains at twilight. I held her up high and she sniffed in the bone-dry air. She took a look at the mountains, a look at me, then back at the mountains, then flashed me another look, eyebrows aloft. She couldn't speak it out but I detected exactly what she meant.
*"Dad, if the Sun's energy transformed the water from our pool into vapor as light as the air and the wind blew that vapor towards the mountains, wouldn't all the little droplets coalesce into some kind of billowing superstructure that, if saturated enough in humid air, so rare for bone-dry Sylmar, would precipitate? But if it were cold enough at the mountaintop's altitude, wouldn't the falling molecules of water lose the kinetic energy that kept them liquid? Wouldn't they form solid crystals, both slippery and gossamer, that alight on the ground?"*
I assented with my own gaze.
*"But Dad, wouldn't that mean I could stand on a smoothened plank and let gravity spend my potential energy to pull me down the frictionless surface of the mountain?"*
"That's right, dear. But you don't know how to stand."
*"When I learn, can you teach me how to tear up the slopes?"*
"I don't think I can. Your dad is a low-gravitional-potential-energy Jew, all-but-fastened to the ground."
*"Do you know someone who could teach me? Someone you trust? You know that I am a picky and temperamental woman, Dad. I need a teacher who is empathetic and patient but also competent and energetic. She better have a generous and, dare I say, fat spirit. I'm only six months old. I need a good role model. One that I can count on. Do you know someone like that?"*
"I do. But you need time to grow and so do I."