reflection

I spent the first 22 years of my life on this earth in Nebraska--the east end of it, to be specific. But we regularly drove the whole length of the state, along I-80. First, the trips were to the farm where my father grew up; later, it was a passage to Colorado to ski; and, at the very end of my permanent residency, to meet the family of a man I fell in love with and eventually married.

The drive follows the Oregon trail. We used to hunt for wagon wheel ruts when I was a kid. My dad would see them but they were beyond my vision. Today, I can see the trail--or at least understand why you would travel this path--if travel was your soul.

All these years later, twenty plus years after I left the state, this drive across I-80 feels like home.

There is something about how the flat, barren prairie stretches to the trees ringing the edge of the Platte River...about the blue of this sky...about how this sky domes wider than anywhere else...about the wispy clouds...about how I know these particular clouds. These empty trees--gnarled, old river trees--are familiar to me. They are different than elsewhere. They are mine.

The skeletal husks of corm in the fields still run alongside the car greeting me. They are like an old cattle dog running alongside the grain truck, herding its wheels.

Even the brown...the particular shade of winter deadened grass, a shade that matches the dirt roads exactly...a shade just a hue darker than the highway itself...is familiar. (Yes, Willa Cather, the grass does have a touch of red.)

This state may be dead last in tourism but somehow it is ingrained in me. There is, after all, a touch of pioneer somewhere within.

This is Nebraska's house.

Happy new year, all.