In Paul Bunyan's Home Town
Bemidji, Minnesota; Mile 1762
Blessed be the Holy One for the gift of Air Conditioning! :) It is a sweltering Midwestern summer night, complete with hazy amber moon, the hope of approaching rain, and mosquitoes the size of small aircraft. A perfect time to be inside in an airconditioned hotel.
I sound far grumpier then I am, though. I've had a wonderful two days, crossing through Montana into North Dakota, where I camped on the banks of the Missouri reveling in the chance to do some more kayaking. There was a tremendous, Moses-coming-down-from-Mount-Sinai, Great Plains lightning storm tearing out east from the Rockies. We're keeping about the same pace; I drove through it two days ago, last night, and this afternoon. It will probably show up again tonight; it is nice to have a companion on the journey.
This morning I woke up bright and early, driving east along small state routes. The joy of the Great Plains is that the small roads are also 65 or 70mph and straight as arrows -- but the environment is so much more luxurient. Instead of soul-crushing interstate, there is a succession of rolling wheat fields, big black limousin cattle, foals leaping along side thier parents, and homesteads in islands of green leafy trees. I have an excess of pictures from this morning, the kind of photograph that captures very little except that it is a mnemonic for the joy of the light and soft, rich greens.
And the quest for a church. I passed a number of small Lutheran churces whose service-times were either hours later than when I was passing through, or hours before. But when I drove into Minot (not pronoucned min-o', but My-noT), I picked up the yellow pages and found All Saints' Episcopal church. What I loved about sharing in the communion at All Saints' was the palpable joy. Folks were laughing and saying hello to eachother and to me as a stranger even on the way to the altar rail -- not in some scary, happy-clappy-drink-the-koolaid way, but in genuine delight of being in one another's company in the Body.
If the morning was marked by Eucharist, the evening was marked by baptism -- or at least, a swim in the headwaters of the Mississippi, Lake Itasca. I wish I had brought a bottle to take home some of the water to use at some future baptism at Messiah; starting a new life with water that marked the start of a 2,552 mile journey. It is a long, kind lake -- great for swimming after driving 12 hours in muggy 85-degree weather. And quite wonderful to be able to walk right across the Mississippi:
Blessed be the Holy One for the gift of Air Conditioning! :) It is a sweltering Midwestern summer night, complete with hazy amber moon, the hope of approaching rain, and mosquitoes the size of small aircraft. A perfect time to be inside in an airconditioned hotel.
I sound far grumpier then I am, though. I've had a wonderful two days, crossing through Montana into North Dakota, where I camped on the banks of the Missouri reveling in the chance to do some more kayaking. There was a tremendous, Moses-coming-down-from-Mount-Sinai, Great Plains lightning storm tearing out east from the Rockies. We're keeping about the same pace; I drove through it two days ago, last night, and this afternoon. It will probably show up again tonight; it is nice to have a companion on the journey.
This morning I woke up bright and early, driving east along small state routes. The joy of the Great Plains is that the small roads are also 65 or 70mph and straight as arrows -- but the environment is so much more luxurient. Instead of soul-crushing interstate, there is a succession of rolling wheat fields, big black limousin cattle, foals leaping along side thier parents, and homesteads in islands of green leafy trees. I have an excess of pictures from this morning, the kind of photograph that captures very little except that it is a mnemonic for the joy of the light and soft, rich greens.
And the quest for a church. I passed a number of small Lutheran churces whose service-times were either hours later than when I was passing through, or hours before. But when I drove into Minot (not pronoucned min-o', but My-noT), I picked up the yellow pages and found All Saints' Episcopal church. What I loved about sharing in the communion at All Saints' was the palpable joy. Folks were laughing and saying hello to eachother and to me as a stranger even on the way to the altar rail -- not in some scary, happy-clappy-drink-the-koolaid way, but in genuine delight of being in one another's company in the Body.
If the morning was marked by Eucharist, the evening was marked by baptism -- or at least, a swim in the headwaters of the Mississippi, Lake Itasca. I wish I had brought a bottle to take home some of the water to use at some future baptism at Messiah; starting a new life with water that marked the start of a 2,552 mile journey. It is a long, kind lake -- great for swimming after driving 12 hours in muggy 85-degree weather. And quite wonderful to be able to walk right across the Mississippi:
posted by tetracontadigon at 6/19/2005
1 Comments:
My grandpa's family is from Minot! My grandpa who, in our last conversation shortly before he died, responded to my "Happy Easter" with "You bet. You bet."
Must be something in the North Dakotan water.
(p.s. This is a beautiful blog, Devin.)
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