Time on the Road

Today we drove a few hundred miles across Wyoming. Heading to Yellowstone tomorrow.

We spent a couple days in Boulder - hiked to a waterfall and drove over the Continental Divide. Last time I did that I was seven. There's a picture of me bawling like a baby next to the stone marker.

I must have hated that sign.

35 or so years later, I liked it.

I've never seen so much beautiful and expansive land in my life. There are endless hills, dotted by sparse and infrequent trees. Shadows of clouds blacken hills, valleys and roads alike and the emptiness of the highway begs intrusion and definition.

Alternating between greys and a burnt orange tarmac, the road shoots straight toward more open space; more hope and opportunity. The hours pass quickly and I feel subsumed into the wholeness of the sky.

Now we're in Sheridan, WY. I'm charging my camera's battery for tomorrow's sojourn into the great wilderness with hundreds of other like-minded tourists.

No matter. We will put up our tent, start a fire and eat over the earth.

It's important to be in places you've not been before. It makes one remember those core values that sustain while immersed in another set of things to do. The minutiae of daily life and work can impede us as we strive to make meaning in our lives, which is why it's so important to check yourself against the unfamiliar, the foreign.

Looking forward to starting the new school year with a renewed and refreshed view of the landscape of school life. Embodied in each of our students is a similar landscape - beautiful, open, optimistic.

Alive with possibility.