Getting Back to Where I Once Belonged

Get Back to Where You Once Belonged, Part I

Two weeks ago I left South Dakota. However, this is not the story of my leaving South Dakota, but the story of my coming to Chattanooga.

After saying goodbye to my ministry teammates, I headed out for Sioux City, Iowa. Along the way, I called Uncle Jeff and Aunt Stacy to see if they could get me a place to stay with Stacy’s family in Chicago. They could and did, and I am very grateful for that.

From that Sunday afternoon until 1:30 Monday morning, I drove across South Dakota and Nebraska. The Nebraskan landscape is eerily alien on a clouded night. The road disappears completely beyond the reach of a headlight’s beam, and nothing can be seen in the rearview mirror. Untold thousands of dangers could be waiting in ambush a hundred feet away, and one would never know. Adding to this blindness is the stretch of the invisible fields to either side of the highway. There is nothing but darkness to either side of the car, continuing until the utter darkness of the land meets the infinite darkness of the sky. One wonders, driving through this blackness, whether Columbus’ contemporaries were not correct: perhaps the world is flat, with edges that pull travelers off the face of the earth, leaving them to fall eternally. If they were correct, this flat planet is at its narrowest in Nebraska, where the Earth’s edges draw close to within a few miles of either side of the highway.

Needless to say, it was a thrilling drive, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Driving through oblivion is a delight to the imagination, although it does make one very sleepy. That night, I slept in a hotel in Sioux City, and then rose early the next morning to drive to Chicago.

I looked forward to exploring Chicago, even more so after Sunday afternoon, when Dad suggested that he fly up and meet me there. The day was enjoyable, although thoroughly uneventful. I listened to music and made a few phone calls along the way. I did run upon a wind farm in Iowa, which was terribly exciting. Whenever I see a large renewable energy operation, I feel the same way I feel when I go to buy something, and find out that it’s five dollars cheaper than I thought. It just strikes me that humanity is getting a great deal. I can power my electronics with the wind? And the wind is free, except for the cost of the turbines? Now I can afford a book that I don’t buy used, and theatre tickets, and a dinner some place where I have to wear a tie to get in. Take that, fossil fuels. So, this is what bargain shopping for power sources looks like:

That evening, I arrived in Chicago. I got to Stacy’s cousins’ house just as the sun was setting, making me quite proud of my timing. I liked those folks very much; they had that hospitable quality that makes one feel comfortable enough to be family right away, but with a gracious restraint that prevents any feeling of forced welcome, or of family feuding. My new Chicagoan friends told me all about their big city as they fed me coffee cake. My head was spinning with the hundreds of things I had to do the next day by the time I went to bed.