Plausible Impossible

Huh! Here I am in electronic space! I've been on the edge (my family would tell you for a lifetime) on e-mail, cell phone, etc. Wow, it's quiet out here! So I'll fill the dead air with why I'm here. I feel like Walt Disney who lived in the "plausible impossible". Nothing about this space is real. There's no paper yet I am going to "write". There's no envelope but I am going to send it on. There's no stationery for you to hold in your hand yet you are going to read (well, hopefully, you will).

I write. Lots of people do. I fill pages with my thoughts on . . . stuff. Sometimes, I let people read bits and tidbits of things I've written. They tell me I should write. (Thought I had.) I write more. So how do you share with multiple friends, family, acquaintances, their pets and poodles? Get a blog spot. Yeah, well that is scary!

I usually just put down on paper my thoughts. I'm not so much trying to convince others to think my way. I want to leave behind something that lets my family know what I was thinking at given points in my life. I don't always have the same perspective on things others do but I am always convinced I am right in there with the mainstream. Then I see the expressions on their faces and I realize I've gone somewhere they didn't and we are no longer speaking the same language.

For instance: Our friend Steve once said that he would look at prairie and see sky and prairie and I would see something beautiful. So, I thought about that. My husband, our Daughter and I took a trip to South Dakota one year. We saw so much that was spectacular. Pipestone, MN. Chamberlain, SD. The Badlands in SD. Keystone, SD. The Needles. Mt. Rushmore. Heady stuff!

After a day of driving in unbelievable windy conditions in a high-profile vehicle (our conversion van), we entered the Bandlands. Relief was not spelled R O L A I D S that day, it was N O M O R E W I N D. As we came out of the Badlands, we climbed until once again we were on prairie. The clouds that had tossed and heaved about all day were passing east and there was more light than had filtered through. The prairie grass was undulating rather than churning. Colors not in my color box were all around us. So many shades of brown and gold, yellows, blues, shimmered. I looked at everything as though for the first time; I had seen it before through the eyes of a four or five year old. Now, now I could appreciate what it all stood for.

A vast country God gave to be lived in, explored, settled, tamed, built up, abused, trashed, covered over with thoughtless waste. I could see it all at once on empty prairie. I could see what the first explorer saw in the limitless expanse of it. I could see that we as people had tried to fill it up. I could see what The People must have felt as they moved through following the buffalo, picked the berries, harvested the roots, gathered the greens. I could smell it. Places on the prairie are littered with waste and unwanted items which will eventually be absorbed by earth or not. That day? Wild horses were running in the far distance.

We weren't sure at first what we were seeing. Then there it was. The unmistakable beauty of horses running for the pure pleasure of running. Manes flying, muscles stretching, huge bodies moving with the grace of ballerinas. The memory brings a lump to my throat even now. I can smell the October air and prairie grasses, the dust, the chill in the air. Way off to the east those miniature wild creatures running. I understand that need to run. I never walked any where as a kid. I liked the feel of legs stretching, feet coming down with sureness, arms and shoulders in rhythm with the rest of the body, and hair moving in the wind. I liked pacing myself to run farther and longer. Sometimes I just loved the speed of it. Sometimes I liked the mindlessness of it.

There was another side to running. That side was like a need to get somewhere. Where? A push to accomplish something drove me to run. Accomplish what? Whenever I was traveling there would be a spot that called, "Run to me". I would want to get off the train or out of the car and run. The feeling wasn't pleasant. I could never figure out if I was running away or to. I never could predict the impulse, the sight or smell would trigger the desire. I didn't go, although there were those "almost" times when I started to answer the call and backed away. Albuquerque, NM was one such call. I collected my bags and started to head for the coach door when the conductor stopped me and said, "This isn't where you get off, Miss. You go all the way to Kansas City." He was right. It wasn't where I was supposed to get off and he obviously was not hearing my call.

That restlessness to follow the call, led my brother and my eldest sister to alcoholism. Another sister raised her son, married a man and was widowed after 20 years, and then began moving every couple years to a new place. My other sister died of cancer in her 40's but had married a man who's jobs and lifestyle caused them to move every couple years. She spent her life trying desperately to find a place, a way to settle in and stay.

For a long time, I thought the call was to draw, to write, to sing, to run toward or away. I learned that all those things are outward expressions of who and what and where I am. The call was inside. It was God. God was tugging at me to seek His Spirit of peace and to flee the restlessness Satan was selling. God has allowed me to see things, places, people and blessed me with a mind that still runs when the body is aging and thickening beyond the possibility of cross country races.

The reality of feeling the need to run was met several times by others who for a few moments understood the expression on my face and the yearning in my voice. My friend from high school who was driving when she, her brother and sister-in-law and new nephew were driving to California. Dini and I were visiting, her brother and his family were going home. We spent a night in Gunnison, CO. A horse actually stuck his head in the window of our motel cabin window in the morning. We stopped for gas just outside Gunnison. Dini looked at me and said, "Go ahead and run, stay on the main road. If you come to a cross roads stop and wait. I'll pick you up when I'm done here." I ran! Golden day! I ran. Soon my lungs were burning and my legs felt like lumber and I had to stop. Altitude takes time to acclimate to. But, oh it was glorious!

Another such time was when Dave and I walked around the base of Devil's Tower in Wyoming. To feel the wind, see the height, hear the silence was rare and precious. To smell the sage on the wind and know it was given by God to please humans was wonderful, awesome. To see another people had recognized something given and had given back with medicine bundles and tokens of their worship reminded me I barely take time to thank God for what He has let me see. I touched rocks, felt the path under my feet, and inhaled the scents and thanked God for what He created, the trip we were able to take, and the man and young woman who were patiently waiting for me to finish soaking in what I was seeing and feeling so we could get in the car and find something to eat and a place to sleep for the night.

Sometime, I'll tell you about Chamberlain, SD. Following in the footsteps of my dad. I'll tell you other things as well. You only have to read what interests you. I'll just keep writing. Until next time.