Sixty-seven miles per hour winding down through the
grapevine. Late afternoon, not long before dusk. The narrow walls of the brown
canyon open up into a wide, flat expanse; I have just entered the south end of
the hundreds-of-miles-long valley. Like a gaping-open mouth into a new world,
my body is suddenly loosed from months of tension, months of holding on, months
of constriction…a tightening grip I had not realized until that moment of
release. Purely visceral. Few thoughts, but a feeling of awe. And profound,
core-of-the-earth-deep peace.
*
* *
I continue on. Feeling alone but not lonely. The moving
truck and Companion are some tens of miles behind me at a truck weigh station.
Cat stirs on the seat behind me; Dog yawns audibly behind the safety barrier in
the back of the vehicle. And all I need is right here, in my corpus…in my
heart…in my soul. A feeling of well-being courses through me. It is so powerful
I almost giggle aloud; electric excitement pushes my blood a little
faster-seeming than usual.
*
* *
To what have I been holding on so tightly?
*
* *
I watch as we drive west, the sun moving lower in the sky. I
am not sure where the horizon is because it all melts into one pumpkin orange
splotch of blinding color. The narrow country road carries us closer to the
setting sun but we never reach it. We’ll never get there: it is too elusive,
too changing, too intangible. The color, though: now that is material, even in its fleetingness. White to vegetable
orange to deep rust, and then it disappears. Excitedly I wait for the pinks and
golds I know will result from this daily miracle of light-disappearing. They
come. I watch. I stand at the edge of the road in the cooling breeze and my
shoulders ease into a posture of surrender, of calm, of appreciation.
All blog photographs taken by Jennifer J. Wilhoit unless otherwise noted.
