day 3: driving.

We’re only driving this route west one time, and there are things I want to remember.

The lush emerald green of Missouri, the highway lined with Black-eyed Susans.

Wide-open land around the University of Kansas, the Fort Riley airfield with its rows of dark, stern Chinook helicopters.

 

 

Great big swaths of cornfields of Kansas and the wind, always the wind.

In Kansas I keep company with a few of my friends: Dorothy of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Henry of 100 Cupboards, Laura and Mary, just as I kept company with Hannah, Nathan, Jayber, and all my other Port William friends driving through Kentucky.

I want to remember the sun, deep orange as an egg yolk from one of our chickens, straight ahead, burning into our eyes each evening as we drove.

The hangnail moon glimmering in the dark sky over our hotel.

 

 

The hours in the van, just the six of us together, singing loud to David’s Run playlist, listening to On the Banks of Plum Creek as we cross our own prairie.

Time, just to sit and be, with nothing much to think about.

 

 

I want to remember the long stretch of scrubby ranch land as we cross over into Colorado, David and the kids sleeping all around me in the van, as I think about Ralph Moody and his family trying desperately to build a ranch life in this dry, flat state in Little Britches.

My imagination springs to life with stories upon stories upon stories, a lifetime of stories. My parents gave me the gift of words and of books from the time I was born. The places we discover are often strangely familiar because I’ve traveled them already in pages of my books.  My kids are traveling them now in their books too, and in real life.

 

 

My four bright, sun-filled children, just as they are today, with their laughter and their backseat squabbling and the chaos of after-dinner van boisterousness. I want to remember Noah asking every hour, “So…how many minutes ’til the Grand Canyon?” They make our travel pop with color and life.

 

 

Gabe’s dimpled smiles pleasure as he sounds out words in the backseat, or reads roadside signs.

 

 

Rest area lunches of peanut butter and honey sandwiches and cheese and apples.

David setting up the pocket rocket to boil water for my afternoon cup of Earl Gray.

 

 

Learning to stop at Truck Stops for gas and bathrooms and basic grocery items (and sometimes candy), because they’re the nicest.

 

 

Our country is big and wide, and there are people living their lives across it, with their own particular joys and sorrows.

We can take a trip like this, and see these sights because other people came before us. They rode on horseback and in covered wagon and by train and they worked and endured and fought and prayed and lived their lives settling this great big land. They fought wars and lost children and committed sins and showed unexpected kindness. They were brave.

They’re apart of the story of our road trip, and I’m a sliver of their story. I owe a debt of gratitude to those who stretched west before us.

 

 

And I will forever remember hours of driving across flat lands and then, in a moment, seeing a smudge on the horizon. Squinting, watching in open-mouthed wonder as the Rocky Mountains appeared before us in their haze.

There is nothing in the world like driving to those mountains on the long, lonely highway, seeing them take shape and rise majestic over two hours.

Driving around Denver and then the road climbing up, up, up.

 

 

And just like that, we’re here. One thousand, seven hundred and fifty miles and three days’ of driving. When you find yourself winding up those great, rocky mountains, you know that it was worth every minute.