The last two weeks have made my life feel small.
It has been 17 days since our family began “socially distancing” by working from home, no daycare, no church gatherings, no meeting friends at the library or park. No bookstores, coffee shops, thrift stores, shopping. No haircuts. No food samples at the grocery stores. In short, no “man-made” community entertainment.
That leaves… what?
Well, small things. Home. Skype, Zoom, Hangouts, Webex. Netflix. Coffee. Tea. The garden. Cooking. Reading books. An attempt at routine in the midst of global upheaval. That’s all fine, but not an entirely happy human does it make. I feel cramped. Pent up. Unable to help. Bored. And yes, irritable.
So finally in a moment of desperation, I put myself inside another small “safe” box, this one with an internal combustion engine and a full tank of gas.
I’m not sure where I’m driving, but I want away, and I think that means West for some reason. So West I go, and the wind pushes back at me. Thankfully my car makes it easy and the gas is cheap. I remember a hummocky area of dramatic glacial deposits I spotted on a previous drive, and decide to go re-explore that.
After about 25 minutes, the gentle rolling hills and flat plains give way to something subtly different. The superficial landscape of patchwork fields and fence rows is still there, but the land is changed. It feels alive, like it’s has been boiling and flowing and pushing, but just now decided to rest and then fell asleep, frozen in time. Farmed fields contort into strange shapes as the earth rises up into abrupt hills, uneven and choppy like waves on the sea. I turn off the highway and take to gravel. I am close. I want to get to the top of one of these hills. If I can get there, maybe I will understand. Maybe I will find what I am looking for.
This road doesn’t go through. A farmer is moving bales here. Better go straight. I see a wild grassy hilltop breaking out of the fallow fields of corn and beans. I wonder how to get to it. Maybe I can climb it.
What luck. A wildlife preserve! I can get out and walk. I can feel the dry grass give softly beneath my feet as I dodge gopher holes and follow the deer tracks. Song sparrows send up their clear warbling trill from nearby trees which howl in the wind. I hike up the hill, and with anticipation, crest a grassy knoll high above the prairie swale below. The wind catches me hard, tries to blow me back. I plant my feet, lean into it, my hat blows off. It feels free, wild, huge, and open. I can see for miles while clouds skitter and break the sunlight overhead.
Spaces can be a reflection of ourselves. When my house is messy, it’s because I’m feeling disordered, scattered, or stressed. We seek spaces to fit our needs, though often we don’t know what we actually need. This space is what I needed. Wild but full of life, unpredictable, and big enough for almost anything. Big enough for wild sadness. Big enough for wild hope.
When I finally leave, my legs are tired, but my heart is full. I have questions to ask. I need to learn more about this place, this place that is not small. I will be back.