The Great Divide

I've crossed a great divide. I feel it.

Moving across the country is what we all must do from time to time, I'm certain, to get a feel of the American scope, the enormity of this nation, and to remind ourselves that nice little lawns and suburban shopping centers make up a tiny part of the United States.

We don't own this place. We belong to it. It isn't crowded but huge and remarkably lonely in its spaciousness. It's anthropomorphic narcissism to assume our nation is what we see in our own gerbil cages. Getting out onto the American ground is humbling and sobering.

Long, long desert stretches. Wide prairies, horizon to horizon. A few clusters of folks here and there. This is a major chunk of the world, and shortly we may wake from our doze and discover that rats and mice and cockroaches have been plundering our wealth for their own aggrandizement. When that happens, when we compare the real physical breadth of our nation and its weight of resources, we'll be obliged to squash the rodentine corporations that are squirreling away our wealth.

Who are these piss-ant speculators, juggling numbers and derivatives and robbing pension funds? Well-dressed, self-congratulatory, puffed-up thieves. At some point it's going to be critical that we remember our grampas. They worked willingly within codes of self-restraint and ethical boundaries that were essential to their identity. They couldn't respect themselves without the codes. They would not look kindly on legislating ethics, morality and logic out of existence, a process that's ongoing in Washington.

Seeing the big-ness of this nation puts the money pests in perspective as embarrassingly trivial frauds. Isn't it time to get angry?

This is a wonderful land. It's easy to hear Woody Guthrie out here on the road. Get out in the big spaces and listen.

One expects a mighty ridgeback for the Continental Divide but I crossed it this afternoon on a flatland Interstate, I-10. Without the sign, announcing the geographic fact and the height, around 4500' above sea level, I wouldn't have noticed. But that sign struck a harmonic. It occurred to me that my life has crossed over into another watershed phase, and that I'm following the downslope gladly, looking forward to a natural return to family and closeness. Big medicine.

The land speaks to us. No doubt about. It can sound like Woody, or it can sound like a brief thundering rainstorm whacking the windshield as you drive the desert floor, or like wind over gravel at a rest stop. I don't know for certain what it's saying to me, yet, but the message is crucial, stirring, important. I must listen louder.

Braxinoso Speaks

Himself has been in the car too long. He's gone a bit woo-woo on us. He's wringing significance out of desert rocks and finding messages in rainstorms. But this is what he does. It's my job to keep him on-task and out of bogs. Perhaps it's his job to hear language in running water. From each, according to his ability . . .