Feeling the pull October 29, 2010

Today, several people from my home county added pictures to facebook and I looked through them.. photos of a young football player on a Friday night, little brother held on shoulders, the dusty little cowboy boots dangling… a family birthday party… a gigantic drooping cloud, golden from the sunset, dwarfing the white windmills in the far background… good old familiar fields.

Every night, for many a summer,  I would walk to the farmhouse and see the sunset through these trees… knowing that I could always walk a few steps out of my way, and there I would be, no trees or telephone lines, nothing but the flat field and the sky and me.

I didn’t expect to stay in a place where so much separates sunset and me for longer than I had to. And yet I’ve been out of school for a year almost, and I’m still living in the middle of a big town! And, it’s where God wants me to be, so it doesn’t feel like torture. The people in my life make it more than bearable.

But today, looking at those pictures, I was the teenage girl who couldn’t imagine being happy living anywhere else.

It’s one thing to visit. Another to live there. It takes years to get to you. For you to look past all the nonexistent mountains, expected forests and imaginary hills that make up many an attractive destination. I can only describe it as being pure. Quiet. Not exactly timeless, but filled with time, slowly flowing. Open. Bleak and refreshing.

Solitude comes with the territory.

I miss having animals that I can go out and visit any time. I even miss spacious drives, miles between errands and home. The stars at night, of course… stretched and gauzy, the Milky Way, kiloparsecs from our leaning white wellhouse.

Miss Ruby, former inhabitant of our farmhouse, could hardly bear to give up the view of the sunset from the kitchen window, when age pushed her to relocate. The skies draw you in, proclaiming the work of His hands, new and exciting every day, gift after gift, cloud after cloud.

I think of all of the dusty stacks of old “Country” magazines that Miss Ruby would give us.. the tagline always has stuck with me: “for those who live in or long for the country.” It’s one or the other. I always long, at least a little bit, for my home corner of Colorado, all the familiar glory written across its skies, underlined by flat horizon.