Stop and Smell the Sagebrush

We planned for just a few hours of driving on day five so we could spend most of the day in Theodore Roosevelt National Park. For Rich and Laura - this was like a sacred pilgrimage important to travel with our children.

Theodore Roosevelt credits the badlands in North Dakota for personal healing and, later, for deepening his understanding of nature and a full appreciation for the value of its preservation. While many crossing the country will bee line to Yellowstone, we were drawn to here. Named as "Mako Shika" or "no good land" by the Sioux, perhaps in an ironic ploy to steer settlers away from a place of nothingness, the badlands spoke to us as they did to Roosevelt:

“There are no words that can tell the hidden spirit of the wilderness, that can reveal its mystery, its melancholy, and its charm."

Laura and Rich - now joined by Jacob and Sara - are on a journey that connects to this place. We met in service to community at Roosevelt High School, doing what we could, with the simple gifts we had, where we were. We stumbled into love, contracted into marriage, and - as we grow - we now are falling in love in many new and different ways. We changed where we were for a while, finding new places to share our time and earnest talents in community. We are most alive in conversation and working alongside others doing the same - in Erie, Ashtabula, and now a list that grows steadily.

We were and are a family of people who have known trauma and are working toward healing, individually and collectively. Nature soothes us, inspires us - and we rally for its protections when and where we can.

At some points in the park, particularly in the most barren landscapes of the badlands, Rich and Laura both felt deep desolation. We drove the winding road with an awareness of how humans have annihilated the bison and wild horse herds for a cattle industry that feeds an unsustainable American diet and accelerates climate change. We carried knowledge that people indigenous to this land were marginalized, oppressed, deculturated and lied to for the gain of white immigrants. It was almost too much to hold. Then, we turn to the peace of wild things, a la Wendell Berry, for consolation, inspiration and renewed resolve.

The Peace of Wild Things

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

These photos can only begin to capture what is in our hearts - giggling at prairie dogs, bison roaming up steep grasslands and down winding roads, the smell of sage in the air, hoodoos and rock formations of all shapes and sizes. How about this spontaneous encounter?

Today, we sit in bentwood rockers on the porch of a CCC era lodge, our loving Shepweilador nearby. Our week long meandering journey is coming to a close, and we know the pace and pressures will build again soon. So, we draw in reflections from our sublime day at Theodore Roosevelt National Park, converting it to inspiration we’ll carry with us into Oregon