midnight in the garden of...good and green? an update

garden update: the thing has gone nuts! it's getting to be quite the jungle in there. and i'm eating its fruits as fast as i can, trying to share them with friends along the way. here are some pictures, because it's too late to actually write anything, but not too late to mess around on the internet, posting some photos.

gardening. groundedness. God.

i've been having conversations about gardening with several friends lately. about our obsession with putting things in the ground, watering them, tending them, waiting for them to yield their fruits. and i've been thinking about how, when things are difficult, when i feel down, when i feel overwhelmed, i turn to my garden. it seems so cliche, but i think there is truth in the idea of the therapeutic power of a garden.

in one of these conversations, a friend said that he thinks gardening is holy. and i think he's right.

i've been thinking about how, when i garden, i feel a satisfaction in taking a task from start to finish and in being able to see the results of my labor. i feel a connectedness to people as i consider the produce that will grow from what i plant and how i can use that to feed my friends. i feel a closeness to God as i consider how He is a gardener of souls and how He set adam and eve to the task of gardening and caring for the animals in eden. at the end of a day of working on my garden, i feel like things are more right in my world.

it's amazing the joy i feel as i watch my peas add length to their vines and climb the tripods i made for them, as i watch my bean plants begin to blossom in anticipation of the beans they will produce, and as i watch little tiny beet sprouts emerge from the dirt i sprinkled seeds in just days before. and i think about how this all requires patience. about how i have to keep tending my garden until late june or early july before i'll get to eat anything grown from these plants.

i guess, really, i'm grateful to God for the gift of gardening. it wears me out, it produces real joy, and it teaches me a little something about the care He takes with me. the joy He must feel when my soul shows a little growth or a small blossom emerges. and it helps me to take heart, even when life seems overwhelming.

the thing itself:

Day One, part one: Omaha, NE to Mt. Rushmore, SD

The day started as any road trip day should: with a coffee treat and a kick-off song. In this case, the coffee treat was a grande latte with one raw sugar from Starbucks and the song was "Get Back" by the Beatles. "Get back, get back, get back to where you once belonged... Get back, Jojo!"

The first few hours of the trip were through familiar territory. We ate up the road:


But then, a we hung a left on I-90 and sped off through uncharted lands. A few more hours of rolling plains and then this loomed ahead:

Yes. You are indeed seeing a very, very large antelope head made out of some sort of metal and plunked down in the middle of a verdant prairie. What you cannot see in this picture is that it was also accompanied by several smaller sculptures of things like flowers and fish. For this there is no explanation.

A few more hours down the road and we reached the spot we'd been seeing signs for over the course of hundreds of miles: Wall Drug. The place that, as Ali says, is famous for, well, nothing. It'll tell you it's famous for its 5 cent coffee. Or for its largest-in-the-world something-or-other. But, really, it's famous because it tells you it's famous. For miles. And when you get there, this is what you see:


As the photo suggests, we found Wall Drug less than impressive and did not set foot outside the car to explore. But, I'll confess: there is some satisfaction in being able to say "Yep. I've seen it."

Pressing on, we finally made it to the real sight of the day--Mount Rushmore, nobly re-named "Rount Mushmore" by Ali. The best thing about Mt. Rushmore is that it sneaks up on you. Once you turn off of I-90, you find yourself driving through a few small touristy towns, and then winding through hills on a highway lined with tourist-trap attractions, and then, just as you think you'll never find the thing itself, George Washington's profile appears, jutting from the face of a bluff. And then, as you round another curve, all four faces are revealed:


It is, friends, a sight worth seeing. It's far more impressive than I imagined; more moving, less cheesy. A taste:

The Grand Western Tour, aka the Great American Vacation

The big picture: thirteen days, fourteen states, two drivers, one car, 5,000 miles.

When Ali and I set out on this journey, it was simply a trip during which we'd visit friends and family on the west coast, seeing a few sights along the way. We'd swing by Mt. Rushmore, we'd cruise through the Redwoods, we'd stop in at San Francisco, Las Vegas would flash by one afternoon. But, inspired by the proximity of some other great sights as we looked at our map during the first exuberant hours of driving on the open road, a tour of the West Coast soon morphed into "the Great American Vacation" during which we would also see the Grand Canyon and Four Corners, classic stops required to make that leap to American road-trip greatness.

The highlights of the journey follow.