The Road to Infinity

Tuesday, September 26, 2006 ~ Oacoma, South Dakota

Most people who drive cross-country in the U.S. gas it through the Great Plains states as quickly as they can, complaining about the tedium of arrow-straight roads and pancake-flat topography.

Not me.

While I prefer my prairie to be gently rolling, even the flatness has its attraction.

Here on the plains of South Dakota, Nebraska and Iowa, where you truly can see forever on a clear day, expansiveness rules. I remember the same feeling 20 years ago when Canada's transcontinental train carried me across the Saskatchewan prairie.

The vast openness -- the endless land and endless sky -- speaks to me of boundless opportunities, limitless possibility. The emptiness suggests the primordial void from which all creation emerges. It's a meditative space, unfixed and open, and it reminds me of the importance of un-busy-ness, of allowance, of getting out of my own way to let life's magic unfold for me. It reminds me of the road to infinity.