COMING HOME - MY JOURNEY'S FURLOUGH

What is it about 'the home stretch' that makes the heart beat a little faster, the foot press the gas pedal a little harder and the pot at the end of the rainbow loom large in one's consciousness. After 2-1/2 months of travel, visits, spectacular sights and a few average days, I looked at my mileage gauge on Pedro. It tells me I have posted almost 10,000 miles since my journey began. Anticipation was high, and my attention to landscape details rolling before me was at fever pitch. Today, I'm headed 'home' - that is - to Minnesota - for a 5-week reprieve before I launch into the remainder of my year-long journey. Next up, I will travel east and south as I set my sights to California again, and Christmas with family. Studies in contrast have always peaked my interest, which is why black and white have held prominent display in the homes I have decorated over the years. With wild displays of contrast, God has painted his earthly domain - nature's treasure trove. Today, as I relive the past 3 days' travel, natures' contrasts loom large.

Having visited America's premier national park, Yellowstone, once before, I began my small group guided bus tour with a degree of mediocre anticipation. It was a stellar day, in terms of temperature, however, the forest fires that were burning in the surrounding 3 states created a gray haze that obscured the distant mountain ridges from visibility. Not to be deterred from the day's enjoyment, I dismissed this as a small inconvenience, listening with great interest to the avalanche of wildlife and nature-knowledge our tour guide rattled off with gaity and encyclopedic verbage. Nothing less than astounding - the wall of data she could produce in a short time. I engaged my audible filter on occasion, but at day's end, the park was so alive to me with understanding and meaning, that I was grateful for the experience. At another time and place, I could expound on Queen Elizabeth's collar, the palisades, the caldera, which conifer needles are square and how you can tell the temperature of the thermal pools of Yellowstone by just looking at them. The highlight of my day, and nothing less than awe-inspiring, was the 'grand canyon of the park', a wonderland of color and depth I'd not seen on my first visit.

Plateaus and plains - an enthralling contrast to the numerous mountain ranges I'd traversed in previous weeks - now the panorama that surrounds me as I make my way eastward through Wyoming and South Dakota. The color of my world in a single word - amber, with smatterings of pale lichen verde. The crevasses, clefts, and butts interrupt the swathe of flatness with regularity, giving in to staccato of nature's variety. Mesmerizing - it is - the great expanse of sun scorched grasses and nubby shrubs - signs of the prevalent drought of this year. The hours roll off in succession, captivating my attention to an audio book, though with some effort. A degree of lethargy invades my day, longing for a sliver of 'normal life'. What are my friends back in MN doing - how is their golf game - what flowers are blooming in their gardens - how many coffee dates have I misse? - a longing for home fills my being.

RV parks become oases in the lives of those wayfaring strangers who live in a residence with wheels. The truth is, not all are created equal. The clean-quotient, the natural environment, the services provided, the supplies available - just to name a few of the desirables. This Friday evening I am to be graced with a very pleasurable 2 night stay-over - my Pleasureway rig and me. My laundry stash was spilling over, my living space not passing the white-glove test and oh yes, the bug bombs clinging to Pedro was disastrous. It was time for a cleanliness overhaul. Mountain View (aptly named, as the Black Hills are just beginning at the eastern Wyoming perimeter) RV park passes the critical review with an A+ - a special spot indeed. Maybe part of it is my discovery as, I headed to the privy - a delightful open-air recreation area with 2 digital TV's displaying Friday Night football - yes - it's the Vikings!! Whoa, now this feels like home!! Where's the chili and popcorn? A splendid night for me, indeed.

Bidding goodbye to the friendly RV custodials I sense an energy drawing me to 'my roots'. Could I make it all the way home, today?? It's a long shot - off I roll, a new energy replacing the lethargy of the previous day.

The back roads of South Dakota are new territory for me. One sees far more 'real' life on the back roads than what is afforded on the interstate system. Leaving I-90 an hour east of Rapid City, I launch into a new kind of custard grassland world. Herds and herds of cattle dot the countryside. I am still trying to figure out why so many times the herds of cows are all facing the same direction at the same time - a most curious phenomenon. I'm hopeful someone will unwrap this folly soon for me! I almost expect the herd to do a 'quarter-turn-to-the-left' as I gaze out my window on their world.

Today is a 'no-no' day - mostly junk food (hate it when I do that!), but I don't want to take time to cook or stop at a restaurant - I'm longing for HOME. At days' end, I realize I will need another 1/2 day of travel to arrive home in some semblance of order. I roll into a comforting Walmart for my night's sleep and a bit of NFL pre-season amusement on my nifty RV-TV, before giving into REM-sleep.

Southeastern Minnesota feels like an 'Iowa space' to me - resembling the lay of the land I knew for the first 18 years of my life - Norwegian Iowa farm girl that I am. A smile is pasted on my face - I'm going home. The land has become an intensely deep green, lying in the ribbed lines of soybean and cornfields I am so familiar with. The geometry of the nation's bread-basket continues to intrigue me - the way the oat and alfalfa fields square off with the corners of the bean and corn fields - great lined patches that give air-travelers a quilted-view of the world that is Minnesota and Iowa. I will bet that the farmers of Montana and Wyoming know not what a drainage ditch is. My smile turns to a giggle as I glide gently down the asphalt country road near St. Leo where a large antique sign is posted in the farmers front yard, reading: 'Coca-Cola-Fountain Service' - yah, 'Right'!! Minnesota nice, the rural Minnesota mentality displays a 'hard-working-class' where the lion's share of farms are carefully manicured with prolific garden plots. Rolling into Danube, the sign says - "The Town with Heart". "Nice, .... oh, what's this... a self-service vegetable stand - to be sure - only in rural MN!!" I stop, pick out my potatoes, onions, watermelon and banana peppers, place my cash in the chained-down money box and I'm on my way again.

Loving the familiarity of silos, cattails, holsteins, bales of hay and vintage threshing machines gracing the line of trees on a rare farmstead, I grin, full of pride in my home country. I fly past the Bootlegger Supper Club, a small town hangout for the locals, and an occasional vagabond traveler. As I coast into Bird Island, I roll to a stop by the local quilt shop. One last stop before I am 'home'. A few 'must-haves, bit of jolly conversation, and I'm on the home stretch.

How to celebrate my personal homecoming - an afternoon at the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum. Nothing finer, except that the drought has left it's mark on the usual pristine display of botanicals. There are no guarantees in life, but the condition of the roots in both the botanical world and the human world give way to hope for new growth, new seasons of life.

I sit on a bench overlooking the bog - green with algae, but beautiful in texture and depth. Here I rest, a traveler who is safely home - wiser, more enlightened, finding energy and nourishment in my roots, in my faith, in my future. Thanks be to God!

Intothewind-Naturegirl