Nebraska

(written in the summer of 2009 while driving across the US)

I love the land. Not in the same way that I love my wife, of course, nor in the way that I savor hot coffee in the morning or a long hike up the side of a tall mountain. This love is not as full as the one, but deeper than the other. I discovered it by digging, digging, digging until I held broken tools in dirty hands to match a broken heart. It was in that place - there in the soil - and in that moment - when the wind was the most still - that the sun rose above the land into space and shone bright, right in my eyes. I sneezed, then I wept, and laid down to rest.

At that time the land was strange to me, but not unfriendly. I came to it as an alien might land on a distant shore; naive, inquisitive, impatient, and a bit frivolous. In return, the land showed me its mystery, its wonder, and, as all who tread upon it must experience sooner or later, its dry harshness. After making our introductions we got on cordially enough, the land and me, but we were never close enough to be considered life-long friends. There just wasn't enough time.

I came here when I was seventeen, to this place so different from where I came from but reminiscent of my very early youth. I had come from the city, where glass and steel had long ago begun to sprout from the earth instead of corn and beans. There, life had been full of friends and cars, as every teenaged boy's is, racing from one day to the next but never winning anything. All the same, life was good there.

But here, in Nebraska, I was alone. Here in Nebraska, I was unknown. And here, in Nebraska, I was home. Yet as strange as it may sound, all these things were true at the same time. For - as it is with everyone, I suppose - it was in leaving that I arrived; in standing still that I leapt forward; and in dying to self that I was raised to life anew. Because though I had lost my way, it was here, in Nebraska, that I was found.

There is healing in the land, and rest.