Those rovers can inspire!:
Which is why these little rovers mean so much to me. They're MY eyes on Mars, my representatives there. I talked in that last poem about Spirit about "walking alongside" the rover, and that's really how I feel. Like many "Mars enthusiasts", I check rover-related websites (Exploratorium, UMSF etc) several times a day, looking for new pics, following the latest leg of the journey. Every time the rovers move and bring a new horizon into view I feel a genuine thrill of discovery, of exploration. That run-up to the edge of VC was UNBEARABLE! Every day so close, so close... then we were there, "Oppy" and I, on the edge, looking into and across it... well, Steve Squyres' long, tight-throated pause in his interview with Doug Ellison on the Unmanned Spaceflight forum (Google it, you won't regret it) described my own feelings superbly. It was like the very first time I saw Yosemite Valley, after emerging from that long tunnel into the sunlight to see The View, where giant hands had reached down from the heavens and wrenched the Earth apart. Look. At. That.
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