Into The Great Wide Open

Just a quarter mile up the road you'll see it- the most beautiful sight you'll ever set eyes on. The way the ground swells up in a purple blanket of flax, gently swaying like a spent sailor knee deep in his cups. Oh this countryside, this road: wide open yet all encompassing. Close your eyes, drive for an hour, and you're still dead centre, hugging the yellow line. Where the sun sets high-fiving the moon, a cosmic baton pass of grandiose heights. Big sky country. Up and out and still, there you are. A speck of dust, a miniscule, microscopic organism waving in the wind while the clouds roil and rumble shades of orange and pink not found in your box of crayolas. Hot and dry and unforgiving. So cold skin splits and tears, breath crystallizes before the thought has left your mind let alone your mouth. So much space, so many miles of great wide open. Keep going, then go further. Eventually mountains, the ocean and shoreline appear but the same thought skips over and over, stuck in a groove in your mind: what if this never ends? What if at the end of these plains I fall off the edge off the earth and simply cease to exist? How can such expansiveness disappear, fold in on itself, diminish beyond recognition? Is this who we become? Smaller hemmed in versions of ourselves, held captive by our fears and beliefs, lessened by what we surround ourselves with. Go further- a quarter mile up the road you'll see it- the most beautiful sight you'll ever set eyes on.