My friend, Shari, found this amazing article in Esquire Magazine about travelling the state of North Dakota...
Anyone who has traveled this stretch of interstate will understand...
"Because how often do we sit for five hours, chewing beef jerky, watching the sun set? In silence? In dreams? It never happens anymore, except in Canadian hospital emergency rooms, but even then, there's something to watch other than the sunflowers turning west. Without having to make so much as a single lane change, I'd entered the closest thing to a runner's high that a fat man can feel. I had rolled clean into bliss, my mind as open as the fields around me. Squinting into orange, I thought about those things that we never let ourselves think about — those things that we actively defend ourselves against thinking about by having so much other stuff to look at and listen to.
On that godforsaken highway, I had revelations. I witnessed miracles. I saw every mistake I had made. I made peace with my regrets. And then I looked forward, ahead to the first few folds in the earth, to the canyons and the Continental Divide. I saw the rest of what I wanted out there. I saw the battles I still wanted to wage, the people I still wanted to meet and meet again, the trophies I still wanted to hang on my walls. I saw nearly every place I wanted to go between now and the end, and by the time I saw that big blue sign in my headlights, WELCOME TO MONTANA, I saw, too, that I wanted North Dakota to last forever."
Thank you, Chris Jones, for writing such an amazing article honoring a state I hold so near and dear.
Thank you, Shari, my dear friend, for reminding me of my heritage and my roots and for bringing a longing back to a time I had forgotten...when life was out in the deep Badland hills, singing, dancing, and having a good time underneath the starry skies, hiking out into the buttes at night, climbing to the top and laying on the scoria laden ground...so close that you could almost reach out and touch the shooting stars...believing that at any moment...you could feel the hand of God...
Please read more at: http://www.esquire.com/features/empty-highway-1209?click=main_sr#ixzz0Ygve5OOY
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