"It should not be denied, either, that being footloose has always exhilarated us. It is associated in our minds with escape from history and oppression and law and irksome obligations, with absolute freedom, and the road has always led west."
Wallace Stegner, The American West as Living Space
It's time. It's getting past time for me. Oh, I got to go west in late December and did the best snowshoeing I've ever done, in subzero weather at that. And Susan, Sarah, and I got to go west to Utah in March to hike our favorite desert hikes. But it's amazing to me how powerful and unending the call of the West is to me. Maybe it's what Father Schmemann (Russian Orthodox priest whose journals I am reading) is getting at when he says, "It is quite difficult to live until you feel at home." (The Journals of Father Alexander Schmemann, 1973-83) Maybe it's because the dry heat and alpine meadows above 11,700 feet and emerald green in Iron King Basin and the hoodoos in Bryce Canyon - maybe it's because that's where I feel at home.
At any rate, it's time to go again. To enter into being footloose, to escape obligation and history and bury myself in the wilderness once again - whether it's in the Rockies or the canyons of Utah or the glaciers of the Cascades, it's time to go home.
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5 comments:
Compared to NYC, KC is West. Wallace Stenger also said, “Settle down, do the job you came to do, take a vacation in the real West occasionally, but stay here in KC where you are loved and you have been called.” OK, so Wallace didn’t say that but a lot of folks here in KC have and are!
So Dave--ouch! What's your point? Duh!
Paul, I hear you. But for me there is both a geographical point and a vocational perspective. Such aches are bummers.
grace
Dan, or anyone else; I hope you are not reading into my comments anything other than the fact that I have the greatest love admiration and respect for our beloved pastor. You are permitted to read into my words, perhaps, a little frustration and selfishness in that I would much, much prefer Pastor Paul to be here in our midst ministering to us rather than to be out there...though I will defer: not my will...but....!
this time, i intend to not be left behind.
June is coming. I've got my boots and my Camelbak - now all I need is to GET IN SHAPE. It's going to be great.
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