I first noticed someone attempting to communicate to oncoming traffic back in the Mojave Desert. I had those blisters that put me on crutches, and Jimmy Betts walked in front of me to assist one day. As he walked he would reach his right hand toward the white line and wave his hand with a peace symbol. The presumption is that if you reach the hand out the Iron Bulls will not ride the line. When they see something move and in their direction it creates awareness. Thats kinda important since they have the force to obliterate your existence in an instant. Jimmy’s technique was good but I thought the peace sign might backfire someday with a rabid right winger … I kept looking. Then I began walking regularly with Ed Fallon, His gesture looked almost as if he were blessing the oncoming vehicles. His two longer fingers reached skyward and i could almost hear a “bless you my son” with irish accent. Needless to say, I thought that gesture had problems too, so I developed my own. I call it the High Five. I put my hand out toward the line and spread the fingers… like Mickey Mouse without a glove. What kinda bull would mess with Micky? I keep waving. My hand has gone up and shook in the direction of the iron bulls thousands of times by now. I like to think it helps.

The high prairie seems a very empty place to the eye. That is its beauty. Of course It isn’t an empty place. Throughout the day I see how much is happening and how full it really is. As I look at all the uniformity man has laid across this land with its sense of infinite space, I am reminded of my fathers work table and his tape measure. It brought order to our work just as numbers and measurements have marked this immense land. The road is flat and goes on endlessly, but in time you see the patterns men have left behind. The fence post are spaced evenly down the long road. The utility poles bare no randomness as they disappear on the horizon. The amber fields of grain are spaced in even rows. The lines on the highway are straight and equal. County road names count up the alphabet and then double when they reach Z. Those little hash marks that rattle your tire when you stray over the line … they are all evenly spaced and leave a measured distance to the end of the asphalt and that happens to be slightly less than my cart tire width so my road is a bumpy one. I look across the field and see the train track which is nothing if not a well balanced set of measurements. The trains have a temporal rhythm. Coal trains pass, one hundred cars or more pulled by two engines and pushed by two more. I guess at the number but I am certain there is a uniformity to this as well. The trucks roll down the flat prairie roads to and from the feedlots. They shed such a force from their passing that my cart sometimes rolls backward and my face is stung by the feedlot grime that blows out of them. The heart tells me to look past measurements… to seek randomness. Here on the prairie it isn’t easy.

There was an ocean, and then there was desert and more desert, and then mountains–Colossal mountains. Now what lies before me shakes the soul. The earth has gone flat and any sign of the Rockies dropped from view days ago. I push my cart, and although I am sure my feet are moving, it just doesn’t seem that I am going anywhere. Sometimes I see the next towns grain elevator from the town I am leaving. Looking 10 miles in front of you is normal. I have no short term accomplishments to help pass the day. The mind is the big concern. How does one deal with this stuck-in-motion feel? Where do I camp? Someone will see my tent for miles. For now small towns have a motel and I see a few parks in my path, but it will get even more barren as my journey proceeds… before it makes another change. The high plain is heavy on the soul with more reason to look skyward than anyplace I’ve been. There is beauty in emptiness but it takes time to master any understanding of this new aesthetic.