Let me preface this by saying that road trips feed souls by helping us experience what we should believe and how we should act every single day while not on a road trip. They bring opportunity to practice virtue without stress.
We got a late start. Like an 11-hour late start. Our bright idea was to drive through the night and avoid the desert heat. Motor vehicles don’t like heat. 11 hours late put our departure at 9:00am Sunday morning instead of 100:00pm Saturday.
Let me tell you what we would have missed had we left on time.
We would have missed breakfast with my favorite in-laws at our favorite, ultra-hick, middle-of-nowhere, country cafe at Lake Henshaw.
We would have missed the raw desert…
that changes from verdant green, blooming, nourishing buckwheat…
to dry sand crust with it’s desperate grasses and creosote bushes. Miles of creosote bushes. I remember that this is the land of my baptism, where a tiny creek struggled to survive, and almost gave up its cooling waters to the heat of the sun and sand. I brought my tiny, wild baby and my calm husband to this place so that I could be washed where sheep and rabbits and lizards and snakes come for life-giving water. This is where I came to give up notions of bright evangelicalism that outdid my parents’ rejection of the trappings of tradition. Here I embraced my mortality and was baptized. I think my priest was confused and relieved by this odd process, since it is regular to be baptized in the boxy building of church, I guess, but at least my analysis of the act was over so he could offer me communion. Walls kill my soul. Jesus wasn’t baptized in a church. And my wild baby girl splashed in the water that gave me life.
So many memories in this place.
And chollas. Lots of chollas, thriving in this heat. They like it.
They wait for you. They wanna getcha…and God loves these. It is His joy to cause them to persist. Indeed, He made them for His own joy.
Way back in our foolish youth, back when we thought we were keen for blasting U2’s Joshua Tree while absorbing the streets with no names in Joshua Tree – well, we were keen – Brandon brushed by a cholla, and it chomped through his jeans and into his skin. I had to grab those little monsters and wrestle them from his flesh. Thats when you know you love a person enough to marry him. When you take a cholla for him. We would have missed those chollas and those memories if we had left on time today.
We Would have missed these jolly dunes!
We would have missed waiting for a very long train. The Little Lion yelled out, “That train is carrying gold!” He might be right.
We would have missed remembering that we live in a state with a mountain chain called the Chocolate mountains, and the roller coaster road passing through the chocolate lava heat. And finding a cool rock.
We would have missed the date and alfalfa and vegetable farms, and the broad canals that help feed a nation.
We would have crossed into Arizona and over the great river under the cloud of darkness without stopping to romp and wash the dusty dunes from our bodies.
We would have missed the first glimpse of weird saguaro cactuses with their arms stretched toward the sky. Those things are majestic!
And we would have missed finding a place To eat with vegetation options, and Brandon doing push-ups and squats in the parking lot. And connect four with a ruthless opponent.
We would have missed all of that. We are still driving tonight, and maybe we won’t sleep, because that City Museum in St. Lewis is calling our name. But after all, I don’t think we left 11 hours late. Maybe there is no such thing as being late. I think we left right on time.
Heres a song from our road trip playlist.
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