On the Road
A handful of musings, from our time on the road these past few weeks…
June 20
It was sort of a surreal experience, knowing we were stalking a tornado as we made our way across the plains, cell phone service going in and out as I tried to keep one eye on the radar, one on the ever-changing route needed to stay out of its way. We finally had to stop and wait a bit, in a grocery store parking lot, when the only way forwards was east into the path of the monster. How surreal, to look over my left shoulder and see clear blue sky while over my right a rainbow, that glowed for hours, softened the darkness of the storm beyond.
When we finally got rolling again, it was through a landscape that had had the saturation turned all the way up. Light glistened on water droplets balanced on grass grown high enough to brush a horse’s belly and little clusters of bee boxes were the only structures for miles - it was a rolling ocean of green grass and slanted sunshine.
When the Badlands came into view, it honestly didn’t feel surprising at all…more like they should have been there with us, in that otherworldly experience, all along.
June 23
It was a robin that broke the night’s hold, calling “cheerily, cheerio” into the last hour of dark. I was awake to hear it because the mosquitos were murder and my dreams were laced with the anticipation of pockets heavy with beach treasures - and waiting for the sun to break above the water seemed to take far longer than my phone assured me it had actually been.
This is the place, called Little Girl’s, where I fell in love with stones as a little girl myself. All those years I thought I’d become a geologist I can tie back to this shoreline where I crouched low to run my fingers through pebbles made bright by the latest wave. How many years have passed? It might as well be none - I still sit low in the same way and am captivated by the sound of the water, the rocks rolling over and against one another. It is astonishing (and somewhat reassuring) to find that even when it seems everything has changed, some things never can.
June 27
My mind just wants to focus on how different we are. “Oh - that political divide! Don’t look at the bumper stickers, the flags, the paraphernalia!” On the surface it seems like such a gulf to cross.
But then, also, to be confronted with the love of these people - my people. To feel seen and held in the rhythms and ways of family that transcend distance and faded memories and the ways in which we otherwise oppose one another.
Is it simply blood that allows us to look past it all? On my end, I can’t help myself. Or maybe, in this instance, I choose to either let love rule or my own beliefs slide. No matter how I look at it, I am both right and wrong - but as I said, these are my people.
All I know is that I feel sad to go.
