Road Runnin'

Work has again taken me out of my favorite rectangular state, and on a quick two day tour of some of the other neighboring non-squiggly areas.  An overnight in Vernal made cause for some decent pictures to be taken, day one of Wyoming is over here, while some shots of Utah's Flaming Gorge are right here.

The Flaming Gorge was one of the sections of road that I first saw during the summer of 2003, when my brother Matt and I took a roadtrip to California for two weeks.  We saw about half a dozen national parks, got rained on and locked out of the car in North Dakota, had surf n' turf at Huntington Beach, toured the Spam Museum in Minnesota and slept in my Buick in the Big Horn Mountains.  It was a trip that took me to my first summer working at Ponderosa as a counselour for rich California high school kids, and was the first real summer of substantive change and growth in my life.

When we were getting close to the Utah border, it was already way past dusk and we were unable to find a motel in Rock Springs. With no other options,  we kept heading south to find some camping.  Twisting and turning in the dark, we eventually followed the brown luminescent sign for a campground, found a vacant spot, made camp and immediately fell asleep.  When we arose, the tent was unzipped to an amazing view of the sharp yellow cliffs of the Northern part of the Gorge...

and we were stunned.  This was the 4th day of the trip, and the first time I truly felt far away from home.  We had already been through the badlands, yellowstone and the tetons, but for some reason this was the first time I felt truly disconnected from our midwestern home.  I had never even been west of the Mississippi before, and it felt fantastic, bewildering, a little frightening.  As the forest ranger came around to collect the nightly toll for camping before we could escape like true, cheap dutchmen that we are, we got the car loaded and eventually kept heading south.

Roadtrips are the perfect brooding grounds for mental meanderings.  That trip took us more than 2000 miles and over ten days of highway time, with just as much time to contemplate the direction of your life as much as the direction of your tires.  And for some reason, that trip stands out to me as one of the best time of processing as I've ever had.  There is a beautiful thing about driving with nothing to do but play out the past and the future all at once in your melon.  (that, and keep yourself from going off a cliff.)  Matt and I were amazed at something different every day, whether it was the surprising beauty of Western Wisconsin or the amazing arches of Southern Utah, and no trip had been lionized in my memory quite like that one.

I was rolling these memories around as I took another lap through the same mountains that changed me in 2003, and realized that it had been awhile since I had spent as much consolidated, intentional time in thought that a road trip brings.  I thought about all of the events, the changes and direction that my life had taken in the past six years.  I thought about all of the people and friends that are now lost to distance, time, and facebook since then.  I thought of the woman that told me on the 4th of July in 2005 that she would absolutely say 'YES' if I ever asked her to marry me.   Family, jobs, destiny, faith.  Why had it been so long since i had sat in silence and watched peaks roll by?  Why don't I contemplate this more often?

It was then that I also realized that it was Ash Wednesday, and the beginning of Lent.  We have been talking about how to celebrate the season of lent this year in our house, and in our church; and I couldn't help but smile at the fact that I just-so-happened to spend the entire day by myself, in a car, in my mind to begin the 6 week period.  Thanking my mysterious God for the happenstance he had given me, I gunned the engine across the Wyoming border and said a prayer of thanks for all that had been given me before, all that I am currently allowed to enjoy and for the plans that I know He has for me ahead.