Willing my car onto the “Limited Access – Pickups Only” road not too far from my house, I make a pilgrimage tonight to an old, familiar place. It’s bitter cold and–out on the prairie–utterly dark, save for the stars. A thin dusting of snow covers the ground, hiding rocks and ruts. Still, here and there, resilient tufts of prairie grass rear their wind-blown, winter-stripped stalks of heads above the snow.
The view of Cheyenne is much as it always was–flat, sprawling, city of lights–twinkling, by some effect of the wind, in the distance. The view is largely unchanged, but for two things–the monstrous new Walmart distribution center to the south … and two spinning beacons of hope and future prosperity to the east. Watching the lights of Cheyenne shimmer and blink, it was as though the lights are obscured by a hundred unseen wind turbines, blocking, revealing, and pulsing the terrestrial stars as they spin.
And spin they would. Tonight–as ever–a strong, frigid wind rushes over the half-buried prairie grasses and frozen, rolling hills.
Unseen by me, Venus and Jupiter align tonight in the cosmos. Perhaps we’ve had it all wrong to bank our fortunes on the stars–perhaps its the planets that we need.
It’s been a challenging season. Certainly, the economy could use the help of a few lucky stars … but that’s cold and distant–as out of my hands hanging the Big Dipper, or aligning Orion’s belt.
In the southern sky, I glimpse a shooting star. I would have, should have made a wish. A wish for a friend, here, who’s heard distant wedding bells chime … and turn to the angry cacophony of crumbling time, dedication, and aspirations … turned to the heaped and smoldering ruins of something not meant to be.
… I would have, should have made a wish. A wish for a friend, in his own barren expanse, whose only wish this season might be for his chemotherapy to be effective and swiftly passed … the most urgent of holiday wishes for all his friends and family. Get well soon. Get well. Get well…
Ah. Cheyenne.
Feeling sleep tug gently at my eyelids, I power my headlights, illuminating the night. I return to the road–treacherous and winding, cut into the rugged prairie sod for a vehicle tougher and bigger than mine.
Willing myself to it, I press the gas and ply the wheel–as the airy strings of Venus, Bringer of Peace drive me on. My car scrapes the ground, grinds rocks, slides in and out of ruts. I tell myself I can always stop–give up–back all the way out, if the going gets too rough.
But, with foolish tenacity–and the knowledge that it’s been done before–I motor on, reaching, in time, fence, gate, and the highway beyond.
