Ain't So Bad

On the third of October two-thousand and ten, the girl and her dog, Max, awoke to a beautiful morning in the Black Hills of South Dakota.  She packed the car and took Max on a walk through some nearby woods while waiting for friends to join them. 

The grass was tall and short...almost like thinning hair.  There would rocks big and small, most black with a silvery luster.  The girl couldn't help herself and, returning to childhood habits, picked up a couple of the rocks for a make-shift collection at home.  The girl's mother, from whom she most certainly got her snap, crackle, and pop, had said that the flower beds around their home never needed tending because Lacey had brought home enough rocks in her pockets to completely cover them.  Thinking about this story, traveling back to the playground in her mind, the girl smiled and loved her mom very much in that moment.  Something that could have been an aggravation was seen as endearment.  She likes this about her mother.  It's this attitude that taught the girl how to look for the bright side in life.

When the friends from Texas, Kaye and Eddie, arrived and after hearing their story about hitting a deer the night before, they caravaned together to Wall, SD and the entrance to the Badlands.  The girl had a premonition that she shouldn't rely on her GPS, Lily, to guide them as Lily has a mischievous side and likes to take the girl, her dog, and her friends and loved ones on many improptu adventures or "scenic routes" that...well...aren't really that scenic.  It turns out she should have listened to her gut feeling....as she wasted half a tank of gas in a one horse town by way of side streets.  Lily had her last laugh indeed.

Finally, the crew arrived in Wall, filled up with gas and peanut butter and headed into the park.  The girl was thrilled by the sight of the incredible melted mountains.  They were elegant and ghastly.  Water and time had observed the topography, the mountains, their density, their weakness.  Porous material had been found, flooded, weakened, and washed away.  As with humans, all that had no integrity collapsed...and all that remains is integrity itself.

We aren't supposed to think about the passing of time.  The wasting away.  But everything has a life cycle.  This was a reminder.  It caused fluttering, brief moments of gut-wrenching pain.  This girl has struggled for most of her life in putting her finger on what exactly it is she is supposed to do.  The problem lies really in what she does know...that she is supposed to do something very particular.  She has felt out of place so often because of this outlet she searches for.  Or maybe it is a feeling for which she seeks.  Not even she is sure, but she knows there is something missing, and the reminder that time is of the essence was felt heavy on the chest.

After lunch and rambling at the world-famous Wall Drug Store, the girl and her new friends said good-bye.  As she pulled away from Wall and onto the interstate, she had a feeling that she did not recognize.  She sat for a long moment just discovering this feeling.  It was neither good nor bad, but necessary.  She realized she was feeling much like what she imagined a baby bird felt like as its momma pushed it from the nest:  ready, scared, exposed, hopeful, raw, seeking.  That baby bird was suddenly aware she was in the unknown.  Her journey now became a test of faith. 

Faith.  Vital as oxygen.  And she drove on.