Tag: travel

Horses Without Headlights

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… The Amish have maintained what I like to think is a proper scale, largely by staying with the horse. The horse has restricted unlimited expansion.
Not only does working with horses limit farm size, but horses are ideally suited to family life.
With horses you unhitch at noon to water and feed the teams and then the family eats what we still call dinner. While the teams rest there is usually time for a short nap.
And because God didn’t create the horse with headlights,
we don’t work nights.
~Amish farmer David Kline in Great Possessions

photo by Joel De Waard
photo by Joel De Waard
photo by Joel De Waard
photo by Joel De Waard

You can’t have the family farm without the family.
~G.K. Chesterton from “The Unprecedented Architecture of Commander Blair,” Tales of the Long Bow

Photo of Aaron Janicki haying with his Oberlander team in Skagit County courtesy of Tayler Rae
Benjamin Janicki of Sedro Woolley raking hay with his team of Oberlanders

I’m 71 years old ~ old enough to have parents who grew up on farms worked by horses, one raising wheat and lentils in the Palouse country of eastern Washington and the other logging in the woodlands of Fidalgo Island of western Washington. The horses were crucial to my grandfathers’ success in caring for and tilling the land, seeding and harvesting the crops and bringing supplies from town miles away.  Theirs was a hardscrabble life in the early 20th century with few conveniences. Work was year round from dawn to dusk; caring for the animals came before any human comforts. Once night fell, work ceased and sleep was welcome respite for man and beast.

In the rural NW Washington countryside where we live, we’ve been fortunate enough to live near farmers who still dabble in horse farming, whose draft teams are hitched to plows and mowers and manure spreaders as they head out to the fields to recapture the past. They still gather together in the spring to have a well-attended and friendly competition plowing match.

Watching a good team work with no diesel motor running means hearing bird calls from the field, the steady footfall of the horses, the harness chains jingling, the leather straps creaking, the machinery shushing quietly as gears turn and grass lays over in submission. No ear protection is needed. There is no clock needed to pace the day.  

There is a rhythm of nurture when animals instead of engines are part of the work day. The gauge for taking a break is the amount of foamy sweat on the horses and how fast they are breathing. 
It is time to stop and take a breather,
it is time to start back up to do a few more rows,
it is time to water,
it is time for a meal,
it is time for a nap,
it is time for a rest in a shady spot. 
This is gentle use of the land with four footed stewards who deposit right back to the soil the digested forage they have eaten only hours before.

Our modern fossil-fuel-powered approach to food production has bypassed the small family farm which was so dependent on the muscle power of humans and animals. In our move away from horses worked by skilled teamsters, what has been gained in high production values has meant loss of self-sufficiency and dedicated stewardship of a smaller acreage. Draft breeds, including the Haflinger horses we raised for forty years, now are bred for higher energy with lighter refined bone structure meant more for eye appeal and floating movement, rather than the sturdy conformation and unflappable low maintenance mindset needed for pulling work.

Modern children grow up with a different set of values as well, no longer raised to work together with other family members, as well as the animals on the farm for a common purpose of daily survival.

Still fascinated by the The Small Farmer’s Journal, I am encouraged when the next generation reaches for horse collars and bridles, hitches up their horses to do the work as it used to be done.  Although the modern world will never go back to the days of horse-drawn farming and transportation, we can acknowledge there were some benefits to the old ways of doing things, when progress meant being harnessed together as a team with our horses, tilling for truth and harvesting hope.

photo by Tayler Rae



I like farming. I like the work.
I like the livestock and the pastures and the woods. 
It’s not necessarily a good living, but it’s a good life. 
I now suspect that if we work with machines
the world will seem to us to be a machine,
but if we work with living creatures
the world will appear to us as a living creature. 
That’s what I’ve spent my life doing,
trying to create an authentic grounds for hope.
~Wendell Berry, horse farmer, essayist, poet, professor

photo by Tayler Rae
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Where You Go, I Will Go: Desiring Dawn and Dew

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Overcome us that, so overcome,
we may be ourselves:
we desire the beginning of your reign
as we desire dawn and dew,
wetness at the birth of light.
~C.S. Lewis from The Great Divorce

When all nature is at rest, not a leaf moving,
then at evening the dew comes down —
no eye to see the pearly drops descending,
no ear to hear them falling on the verdant grass —
so does the Spirit come to you who believe.
When the heart is at rest in Jesus —
unseen, unheard by the world —
the Spirit comes, and softly fills the believing soul,
quickening all, renewing all within.
~Robert Murray McCheyne from The Love of Christ

The seed will grow well, the vine will yield its fruit, the ground will produce its crops, and the heavens will drop their dew. I will give all these things as an inheritance to the remnant of this people.
Zechariah 8:12

I have had opportunity to fly over a vast ocean to three different continents in my life. Each time, I adjusted my internal clock due to disorientation about what day and time it was.

But my reassurance came from the consistency of the sun rising and setting, washing the world with a refreshing dew the next morning.

Overcome that I could witness dawn wherever I awoke,
I felt the familiarity of home, even in far off lands.

I am reminded the Son rises over a vast Kingdom without borders, without corruption, without alienation, without end.

No matter where I sleep, I am covered by His cleansing dew.

Do not be overwhelmed with evil but overcome evil with good.
Romans 12:21

This year’s Lenten theme:

…where you go I will go…
Ruth 1:16

AI image created for this post

Drop down dew, ye heavens, from above,
and let the clouds rain the Just One.

Latin lyrics:
Rorate caeli desuper, et nubes pluant iustum.

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Ascending Together

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At the gate, I sit in a row of blue seats
with the possible company of my death,
this sprawling miscellany of people—
carry-on bags and paperbacks—

that could be gathered in a flash
into a band of pilgrims on the last open road.
Not that I think
if our plane crumpled into a mountain

we would all ascend together,
holding hands like a ring of skydivers,
into a sudden gasp of brightness,
or that there would be some common place

for us to reunite to jubilize the moment,
some spaceless, pillarless Greece
where we could, at the count of three,
toss our ashes into the sunny air.

It’s just that the way that man has his briefcase
so carefully arranged,
the way that girl is cooling her tea,
and the flow of the comb that woman

passes through her daughter’s hair . . .
and when you consider the altitude,
the secret parts of the engines,
and all the hard water and the deep canyons below . . .

well, I just think it would be good if one of us
maybe stood up and said a few words,
or, so as not to involve the police,
at least quietly wrote something down.
~Billy Collins “Passengers”

I don’t spend much time in airports these days, but I know many who must depend on airplanes to get them where they need to go to see the people they need to see.

Due to some recent horrifying airplane mishaps in the news, I know many say prayers as they sit in airports awaiting their flights and their fates.

Instead of dealing with airports and the sad necessity of leaving on jet planes, I walk on my own two feet out to our farm’s hilly fields, noticing many more jets passing overhead than I remember from past years. Most aren’t as low as I would expect for take offs and landings from Vancouver (B.C.) International Airport an hour north of us or descending for an approach to SeaTac International 100 miles to the south. They are in mid-flight mode, at least 35,000-45,000 feet above us, carrying their loads and passengers in almost guaranteed safety.

I have found a website that shows real-time location of flights all over the world. I can literally stand on our hill looking at a flight overhead while checking my phone to see where it has come from and where it is going. In some high tech way, I feel linked with those people so far above me in that plane, strangers though they be.

Most of these flights are from, or bound for Japan or Korea, to or from the east coast or midwest United States. Apparently these flights are taking a longer circuit over the Pacific Ocean to avoid going too close to Russian air space. They have a long flight ahead as they pass the coastline here in northwest Washington and over Vancouver Island. My husband and I have made that trek over the Pacific to Japan a half dozen times. I can easily imagine myself seated in the economy section, trying to keep my legs from stiffening up over 10+ hours, distracting myself watching movies on the inflight channels.

Instead of having leg cramps, I am here with my dogs and farm cat leaving a trail of footprints in a frosty winter field. Above me, a plane leaves a condensation trail which blurs, fades and disappears in the evening light.

I stand on a hillside at home, someone living out my days in this spot; those flying above are in transit, each with an individual story with joys and tribulations of their own. Though we are miles apart, the passengers in the plane above me connect with me for a brief few minutes.

It makes sense for me to pray these people fly safely to their destination. Someday, someone may look up at a plane I am belted into, and pray for my safety. Or maybe write something down to remember the moment.

We all find our way home eventually, leaving our transient and temporary trails behind us. Surely, that home will be breathtaking and beautiful – and just exactly where we belong.

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The Sunrise Shall Visit Us: We Don’t Journey Alone

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God came to us because he wanted to join us on the road, to listen to our story, and to help us realize that we are not walking in circles but moving towards the house of peace and joy.  This is the great mystery of Christmas that continues to give us comfort and consolation: we are not alone on our journey.  The God of love who gave us life sent his only Son to be with us at all times and in all places, so that we never have to feel lost in our struggles but always can trust that he walks with us.

The challenge is to let God be who he wants to be.  A part of us clings to our aloneness and does not allow God to touch us where we are most in pain.  Often we hide from him precisely those places in ourselves where we feel guilty, ashamed, confused, and lost.  Thus we do not give him a chance to be with us where we feel most alone.

Christmas is the renewed invitation not to be afraid and to let him – whose love is greater than our own hearts and minds can comprehend – be our companion.
~Henri Nouwen from Gracias: A Latin American Journal

13 Now that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem. 14 They were talking with each other about everything that had happened. 15 As they talked and discussed these things with each other, Jesus himself came up and walked along with them;
 When he was at the table with them, he took bread, gave thanks, broke it and began to give it to them. 31 Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him, and he disappeared from their sight. 32 They asked each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?”
Luke 24: 13-15, 31-32

I tend to walk through life blinded to what is really important, essential and necessary.  Self-absorbed,  immersed in my own troubles and concerns, I stare down at my own feet as I take each step, rather than looking forward at the road ahead.

Instead, I could be enrapt and listening to the Companion who has always walked beside me.

This living breathing walking God on the road to Emmaus feeds us from His word. I hunger for even more, my heart burning within me.  

Jesus makes plain how He Himself addresses my most basic needs:
He is the bread of life so I am fed.
He is the living water so I no longer thirst.
He is the light of dawn so I am never left in darkness.
He shares my yoke so my burden is easier.
He clothes me with righteousness so I am never naked.
He cleanses me when I am at my most soiled and repugnant.
He is the open door–always welcoming, with a room prepared for me.

So when I encounter Him along the road of my life — even if I don’t seem to be making progress, staying frozen in the same place —  I need to be ready to recognize him, listen, invite Him in to stay, share whatever I have with Him. When He breaks bread and hands me my piece, I want to accept it with open eyes of gratitude, knowing the gift He hands me is nothing less than Himself and I’ll never be the same again. I hunger for even more, my heart burning within me.  

Advent 2023 theme
…because of the tender mercy of our God,
whereby the sunrise shall visit us from on high 
to give light to those who sit in darkness
and in the shadow of death,
to guide our feet into the way of peace.
Luke 1: 78-79 from Zechariah’s Song

I wonder as I wander out under the sky
How Jesus the Saviour did come for to die
For poor on’ry people like you and like I;
I wonder as I wander out under the sky.

When Mary birthed Jesus ’twas in a cow’s stall
With wise men and farmers and shepherds and all
But high from God’s heaven, a star’s light did fall
And the promise of ages it then did recall.

If Jesus had wanted for any wee thing
A star in the sky or a bird on the wing
Or all of God’s Angels in heaven to sing
He surely could have it, ’cause he was the King

I wonder as I wander out under the sky
How Jesus the Saviour did come for to die
For poor on’ry people like you and like I;
I wonder as I wander out under the sky
~Appalachian Carol

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How Way Leads to Way

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…And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
~Robert Frost from “The Road Not Taken”

Two lonely cross-roads that themselves cross each other I have walked several times this winter without meeting or overtaking so much as a single person on foot or on runners. The practically unbroken condition of both for several days after a snow or a blow proves that neither is much travelled.

Judge then how surprised I was the other evening as I came down one to see a man, who to my own unfamiliar eyes and in the dusk looked for all the world like myself, coming down the other, his approach to the point where our paths must intersect being so timed that unless one of us pulled up we must inevitably collide. I felt as if I was going to meet my own image in a slanting mirror. Or say I felt as we slowly converged on the same point with the same noiseless yet laborious stride as if we were two images about to float together with the uncrossing of someone’s eyes. I verily expected to take up or absorb this other self and feel the stronger by the addition for the three-mile journey home.

But I didn’t go forward to the touch. I stood still in wonderment and let him pass by; and that, too, with the fatal omission of not trying to find out by a comparison of lives and immediate and remote interests what could have brought us by crossing paths to the same point in a wilderness at the same moment of nightfall. Some purpose I doubt not, if we could but have made out.

I like a coincidence almost as well as an incongruity.
~Robert Frost from “Selected Letters”

Robert Frost noted in different letters and lectures how readers misinterpreted his popular, yet ironic, “The Road Not Taken” poem.  His point was not “the road less traveled” had  “made all the difference” but that the roads are clearly described as the same. When life takes us to a fork in the road, we are compelled to make decisions that must take us one way or the other with little to guide us. We are uncertain where our choices may lead us, or if we have made the right choice.

I’ve come to many decision points in my life where I have simply had to “go with my gut.” Some of these turned out to be good decisions and other times I have had deep regret about my choice and wish I could go back and do it differently. But “way leads to way” and there is no going back for a do-over.

I have chosen roads that lead me astray into hazards and obstacles; God continually puts up signposts that have guided me home to safety.  My journey may be arduous, I may get terribly lost, I may walk alone for long stretches, I may end up crushed and bleeding in the ditch.

God follows the footprints I have left behind, and I am found, rescued and brought home, no matter what, and that — not the road I chose at the beginning — is what has made all the difference.

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Returning Home More Enriched

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Every time you leave home,
Another road takes you
Into a world you were never in.

New strangers on other paths await.
New places that have never seen you
Will startle a little at your entry.
Old places that know you well
Will pretend nothing
Changed since your last visit.

When you travel, you find yourself
Alone in a different way,
More attentive now
To the self you bring along,
Your more subtle eye watching
You abroad; and how what meets you
Touches that part of the heart
That lies low at home:

How you unexpectedly attune
To the timbre in some voice,
Opening in conversation
You want to take in
To where your longing
Has pressed hard enough
Inward, on some unsaid dark,
To create a crystal of insight
You could not have known
You needed
To illuminate
Your way.

When you travel,
A new silence
Goes with you,
And if you listen,
You will hear
What your heart would
Love to say.

A journey can become a sacred thing:
Make sure, before you go,
To take the time
To bless your going forth,
To free your heart of ballast
So that the compass of your soul
Might direct you toward
The territories of spirit
Where you will discover
More of your hidden life,
And the urgencies
That deserve to claim you.

May you travel in an awakened way,
Gathered wisely into your inner ground;
That you may not waste the invitations
Which wait along the way to transform you.

May you travel safely, arrive refreshed,
And live your time away to its fullest;
Return home more enriched, and free
To balance the gift of days which call you.
~ John O’Donohue from To Bless The Space Between Us

We are out of the habit of traveling after remaining home for over a year waiting out the pandemic. So a two-day road trip to visit a grandchild takes on nearly mythic proportions: all senses on alert – wondering at new sights and sounds and smells, traveling in “an awakened way.”

One doesn’t have to journey beyond borders to feel like the “other” – a grocery store in rural Wyoming can seem just as foreign when we are perceived as the strangers by our appearance. Clearly we were “out of towners” – driving a Japanese-made hybrid sedan, not a F150 pickup, wearing Keen shoes, not cowboy boots, wearing COVID masks even though fully vaccinated out of respect for others while everyone else is unmasked and clearly suspicious of our apparent “virtual signaling.”

When others see me as a stranger, I in turn see myself differently when I’m not at home. Out “there,” I am seen as a gray-haired senior citizen who isn’t completely comfortable with where I am going or where I’ve been; nothing is familiar so I am slightly disoriented and unsure of myself and what might happen next.

At home, I’m still young in my head if not considerably older and fluffier in body, usually confident about what will happen next in my day. Traveling takes me out of myself and my precious routine, picks me up and puts me where I don’t expect to be. I’m transformed and enlightened even when feeling a bit out of time and place.

It is a good thing to see oneself with different eyes and not always know what will happen next. An adventure around every corner is just fine for a week or so. But coming home from a journey is the truest gift. I look to the east and to the west on our rural country road and think about who and what lies beyond our farm on a hill, knowing that I’m always better for having ventured out to see what I could see.

And even better for having this place to come home to.

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Merely to Be There

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That house was, as Bilbo had long ago reported, “a perfect house, whether you liked food or sleep or story-telling or singing, or just sitting and thinking best, or a pleasant mixture of them all.”
Merely to be there was a cure for weariness, fear, and sadness.
~J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

I wish I was at home in my nice hole by the fire,
with the kettle just beginning to sing!
~J.R.R. Tolkien from The Hobbit

We sleep to time’s hurdy-gurdy; we wake, if ever we wake, to the silence of God. And then, when we wake to the deep shores of time uncreated, then when the dazzling dark breaks over the far slopes of time, then it’s time to toss things, like our reason, and our will;
then it’s time to break our necks for home.
~Annie Dillard from Holy the Firm

Every now and then, I forget to turn off the lights in the barn. I usually notice just before I go to bed, when the farm’s boundaries seem to have drawn in close. That light makes the barn seem farther away than it is — a distance I’m going to have to travel before I sleep. The weather makes no difference. Neither does the time of year.

Usually, after turning out that forgotten barn light, I sit on the edge of the tractor bucket for a few minutes and let my eyes adjust to the night outside. City people always notice the darkness here, but it’s never very dark if you wait till your eyes owl out a little….I’m always glad to have to walk down to the barn in the night, and I always forget that it makes me glad. I heave on my coat, stomp into my barn boots and trudge down toward the barn light, muttering at myself. But then I sit in the dark, and I remember this gladness, and I walk back up to the gleaming house, listening for the horses.
~Verlyn Klinkenborg  from A Light in the Barn

I have always been, and always will be a home-body. As a child, I was hopelessly homesick and miserable whenever I visited overnight somewhere else: not my bed, not my window, not anything that was familiar and comfortable. Going away to college was an ordeal and I had to do two runs at it to finally feel at home somewhere else. I traveled plenty during those young adult years and adapted to new and exotic environs, but never easily.

I haven’t changed much in my older years. Even now, travel is fraught with anxiety for me, not anticipation. I secretly had hoped for a prolonged stay-cation for a change rather than rushing about at break-neck speed when we had a few days off from work. I must be careful for what I wish for, as it is now seven months of stay-and-work-at-home with only two brief sojourns to visit out of town children.

It has been blissful — yet I dare not say that out loud as so many people don’t do well staying at home and are kicking the traces to be set free.

Not so me. I am content on our farm, appreciating our “perfect house, whether you liked food or sleep or story-telling or singing, or just sitting and thinking best, or a pleasant mixture of them all.”

Merely allowed to just be here is my ultimate answer to weariness, fear and sadness.

Great Expanses

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IMG_0139

Not the midnight sun exactly, or endless summer,
just that extra hour holding steady, western
horizon stable, as though shadows won’t lengthen
when in August you can outrun the night
or feel as though you do, latitude in your favor,

North of Sioux City, the sky widens into South Dakota,
turn west and you will think you could see all the way
to Wyoming, and if you drive long enough you will,
crossing the Missouri River, the bluffs gentle,
then the grasslands, the turnoffs for reservations.

As dusk approaches, you may pass a stone house,
long deserted, a star carved over the door, a small pond,
wind stirring over it even now, forming a second thought,
a space you will carry within your speech,
your soul stirred by these great expanses.
~Jane Hoogestraat “At the Edge of a Time Zone” from Border States.

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We have spent long hours in the past week traveling on the great expanses of Montana, Wyoming, Colorado and Idaho plains. It is a marvel to see so far in every direction yet to feel you are barely moving at 80 miles an hour. The extra hour gained at the edge of a time zone is pure gravy of gifted time.

This is challenging land on which people eke out a living. We have seen a cowboy and herding dog flanking a few dozen Angus cattle alongside the freeway. We’ve seen huge combines kicking up dust clouds as they thresh fields of grain. There are 150 year old remnants of barns and buildings, barely standing against the constant winds and harsh weather.

While we now cross the plains in a day or two, native people and wagon train pioneers spent months by foot or horse, many never managing to reach their destination.

These expanses echo with those lost lives of previous centuries, not to forget hundreds of thousands of bison that also once grazed these basins.

We’ll return to the land of rain and green and ubiquitous trees today. But the great expanses of the plains always enlarge my vision of who lives and works within this vast country.

My heart swells in gratitude with the view of such an endless horizon.

abandoned schoolhouse (now collapsed) near Rapalje, Montana

The Hinge of Faithfulness

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No one compels you, traveler;
this road or that road, make your choice!
Dust or mud, heat or cold,
fellowship or solitude,
foul weather or a fairer sky,
the choice is yours as you go by.

But here if you would take this path
there is a gate whose latch is love,
whose key is single and which swings
upon the hinge of faithfulness,

and none can mock, who seeks this way,
the king we worship shamelessly.
If you would enter, traveler,
into this city fair and wide,
it is forever and you leave
all trappings of the self outside.
~Jane Tyson Clements from  No One Can Stem the Tide

What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from.

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
~T.S. Eliot from “Little Gidding” The Four Quartets

I can, with very little effort, remember the restlessness of my late teens once I learned homesickness was not a terminal condition.  There was a world out there to be explored just beyond the gate of my childhood barnyard, and I just knew I was meant to be a designated explorer and traveler, seeking out the extraordinary.

Ordinary simply wouldn’t do.  Ordinary was plentiful at my childhood home on a small farm with a predictable routine, a garden to be weeded and daily chores to be done, with middle-aged parents tight with tension in their struggling marriage.

On a whim at age nineteen, I applied for wild chimpanzee research study in Africa, and much to my shock, was accepted.  A year of academic and physical preparation as well as Swahili language study was required, so this was no impulsive adventure.   I had plenty of time to back out, reconsider, choose another path and retreat to ordinary again.

It was an adventure, far beyond what I had anticipated and trained for.  When I had to decide between more exploration, without clear purpose or funds, or returning home, I opted to return to the place I started. I saw home differently, as if for the first time,  after  experiencing the world in all its glory and ugliness. The next path I took, I needed to leave the trappings of myself behind, unlatch the gate with the key I had been given from the very beginning. The hinge of faithfulness opens the gate wide.

I must remember I have chosen the path that leads to forever, though neither smooth nor easy. Entering that unknown, unremembered gate means I will arrive where I started, back at the beginning and knowing the place for the first time.

What seemed to be the end proved to be the beginning…
Suddenly a wall becomes a gate.
~Henri Nouwen from A Letter of Consolation

The Road Winds Uphill

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Does the road wind up-hill all the way?
Yes, to the very end.

Will the day’s journey take the whole long day?
From morn to night, my friend.

But is there for the night a resting-place?
A roof for when the slow dark hours begin.

May not the darkness hide it from my face?
You cannot miss that inn.

Shall I meet other wayfarers at night?
Those who have gone before.

Then must I knock, or call when just in sight?
They will not keep you standing at that door.

Shall I find comfort, travel-sore and weak?
Of labour you shall find the sum.

Will there be beds for me and all who seek?
Yea, beds for all who come.
~Christina Rossetti “Up-Hill”

It is a comfort to sleep in our own bed after being away for a week. We drove uphill much of yesterday through numerous mountain passes, but then when we descended back into western Washington as darkness descended, we were greeted by the familiar landscape of home.

This life of ours can be a weary and sometimes perilous journey. There are times when it is so dark we’re not sure we can see the road, much less where it is headed or when and where we may be able to rest.

Many have gone on before us so that we will not be left stranded, lost and waiting by the roadside. There is a place waiting for wayfarers like us.

The door is flung open – those who are weary are welcomed with open arms. The road uphill points to the best home of all.