Just before attending the inaugural United We Pledge dinner theater in the newly restored Washington County Courthouse, I saw displayed in the building a beautiful object that taught me something even before the evening's educational entertainment began. It called to mind an experience I had less than a week ago.
The Dragonfly
There is a particular kind of magic that happens when modern noise drops away and you find yourself fully present in an oasis carved right out of the stark, dark volcanic landscape. At Veyo, floating in a clean, rectangular pool cradled by ancient black basalt cliffs, the contrast between the stone and the surrounding desert vitality is striking.
And then, there are the dragonflies.
On a quiet afternoon, surrounded by jagged black stone and towering green, I watched three electric-blue dragonflies dart across the pool's surface. Remembering a casual gesture made by another visitor earlier, I simply raised a hand with an extended finger.
I expected nothing. What happened instead was an invitation.
A dragonfly dropped from the air and touched down lightly on my fingertip. It wasn't a panicked brush or a momentary collision; it was a deliberate landing. Over the next hour, that small, suspended moment repeated itself nearly thirty times. At one point, curiosity taking over, I raised both hands with two fingers pointed skyward, and two separate dragonflies claimed their perches simultaneously. I heard whispers of "dragon master" from others nearby.
Later still, one particular brilliant blue visitor chose a more ambitious partnership. It settled onto my extended fingertip and stayed through six deliberate, slow laps back and forth across the length of the pool. Occasionally the creature would lift into the air for a few seconds, and after I wet my fingertip, it touched right back down to continue the journey.
It was an impossible, delightful communion. An utter suspension of the usual distance between the wild world and our own, right there in a swimming pool half filled with adults and splashing children.
The Bell
I was vividly reminded of this experience as I attended the inaugural dinner theater in the round at the historic Washington County Courthouse. While waiting for entrance to the upper floor, I browsed the gift shop and saw a beautiful metal tubular bell finished with a delicate, striking dragonfly design drop welded onto its surface. That visual reminder of my afternoon in the cool waters at Veyo connected my thoughts straight back to the story of America's founding, which I had come to the courthouse to remember and celebrate.
We build our institutions and monuments out of heavy things—dark basalt, the thick stone walls of old courthouses, and the foundational preservation work of places like Liberty Village. We anchor our histories in legislative acts, ink on parchment, and the slow, incremental efforts of local heritage.
The Architecture of Emergence and Self-Governance
Standing there in the courthouse, looking at the dragonfly design on the metalwork, the parallel to the American experiment fell into place in my mind.
For the vast majority of its existence, a dragonfly is an aquatic nymph, crawling through the shadowed, heavy mud at the bottom of a pond or slow-moving eddy in a stream, bound entirely by the constraints of the water, moving by pressure and currents. And then comes the radical, quiet break. Emerging from the heavy surface tension into the blinding light and open air, it trades the mud for the wind.
That sudden flight is precisely the arc of the founding generation. For over a century, the colonies operated under the heavy, structural pressure of imperial rule—contained by external laws, bound by mercantile constraints, and moving only within the limits set by a distant crown. The Declaration of Independence and the subsequent framing of the Constitution were not mere administrative adjustments; they were a breathless, fragile emergence from a system of dependency into the unmapped, sunlit expanse of constitutional self-governance.
What struck me about those thirty encounters in the pool was the total absence of force. Even as the pool buzzed with the ambient noise and energy of adults and splashing children, remaining calm and still meant the surrounding chaos didn't matter. Frantic or abrupt movement only scatters these beautiful, fragile creatures. True connection requires a steady hand and a simple, centered presence in the current of the moment.
The architects of 1776 knew that constitutional liberty was not heavy-handed domination, but a delicate, balanced agility—the capacity to govern through consent, to shift direction within the framework of the law, and to maintain a republic through steady civic participation rather than coercion. This liberty stands in stark contrast to what many parts of the world have suffered in its absence. When the memory of that resilient blue traveler riding my fingertip across the water came rushing back inside the historic courthouse stone walls, it was a living parable for the ideal: when the environment is right and the spirit is still, freedom doesn't fly away from us. It lands right where we point.
