Grace on the Road

This morning I awoke with a headache. A weather front had come through during the night and it was raining and sleeting. At home, I would have gone back to bed. On the road, there is nothing to do but press on. And I suppose there is a life lesson there.

It is fascinating watching the rain on the plains. The view is so expansive that it is possible to see all sorts of weather happening at once. When we were not in the middle of rain ourselves, we could see brilliant sun and cloud shadows racing across the hills to the left and rain falling in curtains off to the right.

We stopped at Ayres Natural Bridge Park even though it was raining.

This place is just about a mile south of the Oregon Trail. Those going west would often visit to find refreshment during their long journey across the plains. It is one of only three rock arches in the United States with water flowing beneath the arch. Despite the rain, it was a beautiful place. I love that Converse County, Wyoming has placed a couple of benches along the creek. It would be a lovely place (were it not cold and rainy!) to sit and pray, to meditate or journal.

At Hot Springs, South Dakota, we visited The Mammoth Site, an active paleontological dig site where excavation and research are ongoing.

For me, it brought back a flood of memories of my days working in the field as an archaeologist. It was a bit surreal to walk around the site where no one was actually at work. (It is the off season when most work is done in the lab. Actual excavation will resume later this month.) I knew exactly how each piece of equipment was used, how to approach and handle each area of the site, etc. It was learning about the scientists who work with ancient bones when I was five years old that prompted me to become an archaeologist as an adult. The only difference is that archaeologists work with artifacts that human populations have left behind. The whole visit made me terribly nostalgic. I had to leave field work in my early twenties when a heart condition made it dangerous for me to attempt the physical rigors of field work. I often wonder what life would have been like if I had continued in the field. But the Lord had other plans for me, and it has been an amazing life on the path He directed me.

By the time we left The Mammoth Site, the sun had come out. We decided to head for Wind Cave National Park. We were greeted as soon as we crossed into the park by three bison placidly grazing on a hill just beside the road.

And then we encountered the prairie dogs. Hundreds and hundreds of them! Scampering all over the place and chattering amongst themselves.

One curious guy even came right up to our car. I know they are a menace to ranchers in the west, but they are endlessly fascinating. I could have watched them for hours.

On our way driving through Custer State Park, we spotted a couple of bison near the road and thought we would take advantage of the photo op. But when we rounded the bend in the road to pull over, we realized they were the lead animals of a whole herd of about a hundred animals just coming out of the woods.

They were on the move, just passing through the valley. And pass they did, on both sides of our car as we sat stopped on the road for a good ten minutes or so. Just a few minutes sooner and we would have missed them altogether. Most of those that passed close by just looked at me with their liquid brown eyes, shook their huge heads, and moved on.

I loved watching the calves prance around as their mothers just plodded along. One cow stopped every few steps so that her calf could nurse, just a snack for the road.

Another cow had to nudge her calf along when he kept wanting to romp and play instead of keeping with the herd. And then, suddenly, they were gone. The whole herd vanished into the woods.

I am so grateful for today. I have no particular bits of wisdom to share, no deep lessons learned. But, despite being under the weather, I was able just to soak in several aspects of the Lord’s amazing creation, and to wonder about my place in it.

“I will give thanks to You,
For I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
Wonderful are Your works,
And my soul knows it very well.”
—Psalm 139:14

Today seemed to me to be somewhat of an odd day. It was beautiful, weather-wise. But any sort of rhythm that I have managed to develop while on the road felt disrupted. I was so tired last night that I turned in early. The domino effect then led to us getting a late start this morning. It was Sunday, but I wasn’t in church. I haven’t been to Mass in almost a week. Even my practice of praying the Daily Office has taken a hit. And I am feeling it, although in subtle ways. The difference has sort of snuck up on me. But the impact is real. I’m aware, today more than ever, of the importance of daily rhythms and spiritual disciplines. Blessedly, our God is compassionate and patient and always ready for us to begin again.

When we did eventually get underway this morning, we headed for Mount Rushmore. For me, visiting Mount Rushmore was a strange experience. For days we have been traveling over two lane highways through vast uninhabited areas. The twenty or so miles from our hotel to Mount Rushmore are significantly more developed. There were almost always at least four lanes on the highway. And the route is lined with tourist attractions and billboards.

Mount Rushmore itself is, of course, iconic.

It was, especially for its day, quite a feat of engineering to carve these heads into the side of a mountain. It is really in the middle of nowhere. It makes one wonder why this spot was chosen for such a monument.

The thing that struck me most, however, was how the grandeur of the heads carved into the mountain pales in comparison to the majesty of creation surrounding the monument.

The ancient sculpted rock outcroppings have a different, to my mind greater beauty.

I wonder… Are we at times so eager to admire our own achievements that we are blind to what God has done? Does this lead us to devalue creation, believing we can use it for our own purpose, degrading it rather than stewarding it, without really giving it a second thought? Likely none of us would consciously take such a stance. But what do our actions reflect? And how do we imagine our Creator feels about this issue?

One fun side note to our trip to Mount Rushmore was the mountain goat we spied through the trees high on a rock. (Do you see him?)

He didn’t stay long. But as we left the park, he (or one of his relatives) was near the exit to bid us farewell. He was perhaps twenty feet away from us.

What is my take-away from today? Personally, I need to deliberately and decisively return to those rhythms and disciplines that have kept my spiritual life on track and have kept me grounded. It may be more of a challenge while on the road. But to do without them starves my soul.

Also, I hunger to soak in the wonders of creation. I find that my taste for the man-made has faded. It has its place, of course. We are made in the image of our Creator and therefore are creators ourselves. But I want to keep things in perspective and not elevate man’s achievements higher than they should be. And I want to care for the magnificent “artwork” that surrounds us every day, from the grandest mountains to the smallest flower.

“Then the Lord God took the man and put him into the garden of Eden to cultivate it and to keep it.”
—Genesis 2:15

“No place is ever as bad as they tell you it’s going to be.”

—Chuck Thompson

Today we ventured into Badlands National Park.

I have never had a great desire to visit the Badlands. In fact, I’ve always been more than a bit afraid to go there. They are, after all, called the Badlands for a reason.

But, strangely, I think they may be one of my favorite places so far! They were a welcome contrast to the overdevelopment of the area around Mount Rushmore that we experienced yesterday. I felt today that my soul had room to breathe.

Stephanie Payne wrote of the Badlands, “It looks a bit like the inside of a cave that has been turned inside out and warmed by the sun.” I have to agree. I’ve never seen anything quite like this place. It is harsh. It is barren. But it is incredible. The prairie seems endless as one drives over it. But suddenly the ground seems to open up, the prairie comes to an abrupt end, and there are the Badlands.

We spent a couple of hours driving over the road that leads through the northern section of the park. We could have stopped every few feet to just soak in the beauty and marvel. “Beauty” is not quite the right word, though. The terrain is more “fascinating” than “beautiful”. Every time we rounded a bend, we were met with a new view that left us breathless.

We commented as we went that, in one sense, each vista held more of the same thing, eroded rocks in pastel tones. And yet each formation was unique, and captivated us with its own special charms. Mile after mile we drove, bathing in the sameness, awed by the distinctiveness.

How much, we wondered, did God delight in creating each of these peaks and canyons, in molding each section of the land just so? And, because we humans are the crown of His creation, does He take even greater delight in shaping each one of us as unique, original creations?

And what about me? How do I view what God has crafted? If I can gaze in wonder at each mound of rock carved by the forces of wind and water, how much more should I treasure the unique beauty of every human being?

The Badlands seem incredibly vast. And yet they are, in terms of geographical area, fairly insignificant. They are just a dot on our globe. Still, within them, I am aware of my own smallness. “Travel makes one modest,” wrote Gustav Flaubert. “You see what a tiny place you occupy in the world.”

Today, as we meandered through the Badlands, I had a chance to consider the miraculous truth that I matter to the Creator of the universe. In the vastness of all of creation, I am but a dust speck. And yet…

“When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars, which you have set in place
What is man that you are mindful of him,
and the son of man that you care for him?
Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings
and crowned him with glory and honor.”
—Psalm 8:3-5