THE BOLD (Whence Cometh My Strength):
Sometimes, a little patch of the familiar–like an 8 foot square of east coast grass plunked into a western landscape–can provide welcome relief. Enjoy the familiar without letting it derail your progress toward your desired future. Let the green, green grass of home strengthen your resolve and sooth your heart, but don’t take your eyes of the promise of the mountains to come.
The Whisper (Traveling Mercies):
Once upon a time, I moved from the East Coast to the West Coast. I moved back again, but that is a story for another time. On the long and increasingly dry road through the American west, I watched the landscape change. In Virginia, where we started, there were the trees and grass and other plants which were so familiar as to be invisible. It is green in Virginia. In the Summer, which is when we left, it is very, very green. Verdant. Almost tropical.
As we drove, the mountains happened.
The East Coast mountains. East Coast mountains are soft and leathery like someone threw down a well-loved blanket. You first see East Coast mountains about an hour before you are on them. We dipped down from the mountains, through more forest that looked familiar on our path to the plains.
The plains are flat. Very, very flat. Except that, they roll, like ocean waves. There are a lot of farm fields of wheat and other mysterious (to me, anyway) crops. All along the road, at the verge of the farmer’s fields, the grasses are dusky green and rangy. They are taller and more studded with seeds than the grasses on the East Coast are usually allowed to become.
Then, suddenly, the mountains appear. The West Coast mountains. West Coast mountains are tall and jagged. They issue a challenge from four days drive away. They are daunting.
During that four days of anticipation, the landscape changes again. The air becomes so dry it syphons the moisture from your skin. The grasses begin to disappear and the ground is studded with rocks and wildflowers. The plants here are tough and tenacious.
We stopped at a rest stop, a typical arrangement of bath house and tourist information booth. What was atypical was the grass. Someone had planted an eight-foot square plot of grass. East Coast grass. It was tidy, with chartreuse stems all cut to even height. It looked so out of place and it was so welcome. I just stood in it for 10 minutes, rooted in East Coast grass with my face turned toward the mighty Rocky Mountains and our way west.
Sometimes, when we are making a change, a little, rooted plot of the familiar is a welcome respite. Just because our feet are delivered a small gift of home, our eyes do not need to lose their focus on what is desired, on what is next.
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