4,000 plus miles, one bee sting, one flat tire, one rainstorm, a few chilly mornings, several days of sunsine, a couple days of heavy smoke and a good dose of God’s creation painted in red rock valleys and on high mountain peaks that reached right up and touched heaven. That’s what I’ve experienced in the past ten days from the back seat of a Harley Davidson Ultra Classic motorcycle. That trip that I wore myself out getting ready for was well worth the effort.
Every day was filled with a new adventure, a changing landscape, laughter, relaxing, some good semi-philosophical discussions and a lot of just silent reflecting. I love that part of riding – being able to go for hours withiout saying a word. Getting the chance to just let things roll around in my mind, pondering, analyzing, testing thoughts. There is such inspiration in the horizon, such beauty in endless miles of fields awaiting harvest.
Vacations are always good, especially when they get you out of your daily pattern and thrust you into new environments where your senses are stimulated, your brain is engaged and you let go of the demands that pull at you on your non-vacation days. Jesus fully understood the need to get away. He did it often when the crowds had worn him down and the diciples were zapping his teaching energy. He also showed us that a vacation doesn’t have to involve weeks of planning and packing or an extended time period. Sometimes slipping away to a hillside for a few hours on the spur of the moment can be as refreshing as a five day cruise. It’s all in the letting go of where you were and embracing where you’ve gone.
So I embraced the rushing rivers that ran beside the highways. I embraced the golden Aspen trees quivering in the slight breeze. I embraced the cloudless skies, the distant mountain ranges, the quaint little towns we passed through. I let go of meaningful, productive conversations and embraced nonsense comments and silly jokes. I shook off the presure to perform and took on a bit of laziness. I had conversations with people I didn’t know. I read the historcal markers whenever I could. I tried not to check my email and text messages until the very end of the day so I wouldn’t be drawn back into that other world.
I prayed a lot, listened to God a lot, and did the mind-completely-blank thing for miles upon miles. It was great!
Now I’m back in the thick of work, church, grandkids, meetings, messages and mayhem. But I refuse to let go of those hard earned and much treasured days. When I look in the mirrow, I will see my bright red sunburned nose and remember. As the fall colors here begin to appear I will flash back to the ones in the Colorado Rockies that took my breath away. I am going to thumb through my pictures again and again. I’m going to read back through my journal. I’m going to continue to be thankful for my husband and my brother in law who planned out and navigated the entire route so all I had to do was sit back and enjoy. And I’m going to look forward to the next opportunity.
In future posts I will share in more detail about parts of our trip but for right now, I just want to get down in black and white that it did happen. I want indelible proof of the joy and the freedom and fellowship and the love that flowed throughout the journey, wove together into an adventure and a memory, and is now sitting on the front shelf of my heart’s treasure closet. God is good.
Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good; his love endures forever. Psalm 118:29
