Final Reflections on a Week in South Dakota

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.