After much delay, here are some final
thoughts on our trip to South Dakota:
One of the benefits
of life in a campground is the general removal of all the distractions that don’t
matter. News for instance. I don’t want to say that the news and the general
events of the country and world don’t matter, but it felt so good to not hear
the sky was falling for a good long week. And my not hearing about it didn’t
accelerate or delay the rate at which it is falling in the least bit.
Television
too. There was none. And it was marvelous. I went to bed at the same time as my
wife every night, tired or not, because that’s what there was to do. I didn’t
stay up too late because I was too tired to get off the couch and turn off the
television and go to bed. I didn’t wind down with mindlessness. We played hard
all day, made supper at night, washed some dishes, and went to bed. And then
when I’d wake up before the others, I’d simply lie next to my wife in a smaller
bed, holding her, appreciating the day before and the day to come and the long
minutes of half wakefulness that we could share without a job to do or news to
watch.
What is
becoming clearer and clearer to me is that in all our busyness, some of the
greatest demands on our times are the luxuries we’ve invented and convinced
ourselves improve our lives. It seems the real luxury is the absence of stuff,
the absence of distractions, and the forced proximity that allows you to feed
each other’s souls rather than check the calendar for the next event to run to.
Also, I am
deeply grateful for the opportunity to be in awe every day. On most days, in
multiple ways. The beauty of a wild mustang rambunctiously challenging his
peers. The unspeakable ruggedness of the Badlands. The enormity and precision
of the American vision cast into granite by ideals, a visionary, and a host of
blue collar men feeding their families. A herd of buffalo, and the singular
beauty of each one inside of the herd. A sky so big that. . . Words fail.
Pictures fail. And to stand in front of something and know that, know that you
can’t even talk about what you’re seeing, knowing that you’ll regret turning
your eyes away as soon as you do, feeling powerless to take it all in – to do
that over and over across a week is to be reminded that the news matters
little, the television not at all, and the swelling of gratitude for all of it
that accompanies is to feel good and right and true.
It does not
take vacation or the natural beauty of National Parks to feel this. For the
month and half since we’ve returned, I have a heightened receptiveness to the
awe sparked by home. This morning for instance: a silent sixty degrees at
sunrise, with the smell of August corn and a light fog settling over the
waterways, pedaling over the blacktops of rural Iowa, I soaked in all manner of
gratitude at the beauty here. Or the sheer pleasure of breakfast on the patio.
Or the way the hymn the noon church bells here in town play stays with me all
day, reassuring and uplifting. Or seeing my wife’s eyes light up, any time, and
the swelling ache of gratitude that washes over me, knowing she is mine to
treasure. Or every second reading aloud with my girls.
I am keenly
aware of these blessings, and I am more prepared to see the awe in the every
day after being confronted with it every day in South Dakota. There are few
feelings I would trade for the wonder of being in awe. It is a better way to
live.