open spaces

we drove up from the center of Zacatecas to the Texas/Mexico border yesterday. As the road became wider and the land more open, I felt my soul open up. I hadn't realized how much I had missed the clouds and the wide sky and the green-gold grass on the sides of the highway. I wished that I hadn't already purchased plane tickets but could instead rent a car and keep on driving. I'd drive right through the great plains, through Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, and the Dakotas. what a way to go home. I'd see the seasons rewind, from the harvests already in progress in the south to the still growing and green oceans near my house. I could merge onto Route 281 and stay on it, jumping off right before Canada. Driving 70+ mph, watching the land unroll before me, letting the memories come back, listening and thinking and praying. That's how I'd like to go home.

We're still sitting here, waiting, on the tip of Texas. My flight doesn't leave until tomorrow but we wanted to leave time in case of traveling troubles. I'm not used to the water-saturated, super-heated air and I feel lethargic and annoyed outside. Now a tropical storm is rolling in and the rain comes in gusts and cools the air.

Wake up

I woke up three times this morning.
At six, Shanna's radio alarm went off. My eyes were heavy, and I couldn't keep them open for long, but the tree outside my window was radiant, showing off its yellow-green leaves and reflecting the blazing east, which was obscured by the turn of the house.

Later, at eight, my phone alarm went off. I woke up, contemplated my life, the sorry state of my messy room, and what I plan to do today. I dozed a little more.

I got up at 8:10, however. Because the dog, who wanted to be let out of the room, kept bounding up on my back then scooting around my head, sticking her nose right into my face. She dropped a tick on the bed, and I felt it tickling my arm. When I decided that the tickle wasn't imaginary, I got up, found it to be parasite, and ground it to death between a rock and a shelf.

Then I got up.

Orion

Two falls ago my sister and I were preparing to leave for college. It was a full day drive - all 13 hours with a short "layover" in Minneapolis. We were leaving early in the morning.

I remember waking up around 4:45 after having slept poorly. I felt resentful, groggy, and sullen. The car had been packed the night before, so I finished a few last minute items and walked out to the car.

I wrote in my journal for that day "I stepped outside and felt refreshed and beloved. There was a delicate crescent moon, waxing, the whole sphere visible by earthshine. Orion and the Seven Sisters. A cool breeze."

Dr. Jerry Root spoke in our last chapel today. He talked about measuring time by Orion. Knowing that when Orion rose in the early evening in late summer, school would be starting soon. And in the spring, when Orion fell behind the sun, knowing that students would disperse like the delicate seeds of a dandelion when a breeze blows through.