Prairie, Sunrise and Sunset; A Journey Home
Michelle and I drove out to Colorado to visit our son and his family this past week. Yesterday we traveled back home. It is a 16-hour trip by car. The length of the drive afforded us the opportunity to experience sunrise and sunset on the prairie. Here are some experiences of the journey home.
We had come for the visit, brief as it was, just
because it had been too long since we had been together. Love craves and values nearness. Saying good-bye, I found is different when
you are the one leaving. When they come
back to Wisconsin for a visit home the reality of distance is heavy on my heart
watching them pack up and leave. It is
the reality of a parent that your children grow up and find homes of their
own. It is right. It is real.
But it is so hard to let go of the embrace; your heart does not want to
let go. When it was Michelle and I who
were leaving you realize that you are the one that has to let go of the embrace
first. It is right. It is real.
Our home that we have made together, fast-approaching 46 years now is
elsewhere.
The car was encased in a cocoon of thick frost. The thermometer on the car’s dash said minus
8 when I started the engine and opened the trunk for the luggage. I appreciated needing to take extra time to scrape
windows; somehow even these few additional minutes are a blessing as I know Michelle
is getting in some extra hugs. When the
car is packed and all warmed up I pause for a deep breath to gather myself for
my own last hugs. When the door closes behind
us the final time and we back out of the driveway I feel a resolve of what must
be, but then the window curtain gets pulled back and a flurry of waving hands
provides one more image of love to soothe the leaving. Michelle and I wave back enthusiastically.
The stars are still glittering as we turn east onto
the two-lane highway. There are
destination roads and “get-to” roads.
This one is a “get-to” road.
Within minutes we are out of town and into deep dark of a prairie
night. There are literally no houses
along this road, just an occasional natural gas pumping station. The road rolls along on the prairies’ back;
it speaks of mountains behind us. It’s
as though God threw the big mountains into place and the land made a huge
splash, and the foothills are the little
ripples, that radiated outward like visible echoes. You can’t say with certainty along this road
as to what the temperature is. It
depends on the depth of each little valley.
At the top, the car thermometer might read on this morning minus 2, but
as you follow the road downward the temp would also plummet. The record for this morning was one
particularly deep hollow that was minus 15 at its low point, but a positive 2
as we climbed back out two miles to the east.
The strangest stretch to me was the final twenty miles or so where the
low points were settled in fog. If the
temps were in the 40’s instead of consistently near or below zero I would have
expected some fog. What caused it this dry,
crisp morning I have no idea.
The ”get-to” road served its purpose and we turned
onto our first big homeward freeway. It
was still dark but I knew that the stars above were already growing dim. The literally biggest difference between my
part of Wisconsin and the prairie is vastness of the view. I know places at home in the big woods that
the only sky you can see is directly overhead.
It seems out west that, like being on the ocean, that you are seeing to the
curve of the earth. Then, along the very
edge of world, the first promise of day silently revealed itself. It was dawn, and yet not yet dawn. It was like the few fading embers from last
night’s fire that still glowed in amidst the ashes.
Those embers came to life and soon the entire eastward
horizon was orange. The darkness melted
from the bottom upwards, as above the rising orange, the softest blue possible
appeared. The actual sun had still not
yet breached when I noticed a strange cloud ahead. It seemed like a cloud; in this light it was dark
purple. But it seemed to be
shimmering. It took another minute
before I realized that it was also moving from west to east. It took another minute to finally determine
that it was the largest flock of geese that I have ever seen. There were thousands, maybe tens of thousands! The cloud of geese then split into three –
each probably still larger than any single flight that I have seen passing
overhead at migration time. As the car
caught up to them I had to look up and confirm that they really were geese and
not some gathering of angels.
We had already merged onto a different freeway that
turned us determinedly eastward when I saw the only wild animal I saw on the
prairie. I spied a single coyote
trotting along the edge of a ridge. The
fact that there was a predator spoke to the unseen presence of the prey. Life always reveals a greater abundance of
life.
We were on yet again another freeway that turned
northeast as the prairie day ended. It
was fitting as the prairie was also ending as we neared Wisconsin. Again, it was the sky more than the landscape
that caught my eye. Just as in the
morning, the spectacle of the day proceeds the actual sunrise; the spectacle of
evening takes place after the sun has already slipped behind the western edge
of the world. Simple soft pastels of
pink and purple and yellows, like the train of the sun’s gown, followed behind
her.
We would finish our journey home traveling deeper into
the night.
His Peace <><
Deacon Dan
Photo by Kellee Halliburton on Unsplash
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