SERMONS
AND REFLECTIONS
Some Reflections on Walking on the Prairie
Barbara
Brown Zikmund
Monday, September 29, 1997
As
I quoted on the program for this morning, Kathleen Norris writes in
her wonderful book Dakota: A Spiritual Geography, "...the
silence of the plains, this great unpeopled landscape of earth and
sky, is much like the silence one finds in a monastery, an
unfathomable silence that has the power to re-form you." [p.15]
"A person is forced inward by the sparseness of what is outward
and visible in all this land and sky." [p. 157]
I
really did not know what she meant by these words until this summer.
I have flown back and forth over the vast reaches of the United
States, and I have even driven in a car through Iowa and Nebraska and
Wyoming to the Pacific ocean. But I did not stop and I did not
appreciate the mystery of these wide open spaces.
In
June, however, I "went West." My sister and I (who
have taken a vacation together every year for the last twenty
years--without husbands and children) went on a "wagon
train" in North Dakota for a week. It was not part of the
Mormon celebrations or some historic re- enactment--it was just a
group of about 150 people who like to ride horses and who want to
preserve some of the memories of the West to share with their children
and grandchildren. The Fort Steward Wagon Train goes one week in
June and this was its 26th year.
It
is a simple trip: You bring a tent and sleeping bag and they provide
food and transportation (a seat in one of the dozen or so wagons).
If you want to rent and ride a horse that is extra, but the wagons
only go about three miles an hour, so it is easy to walk. Each
year the Wagon Train makes a big 85 mile loop trail out of Jamestown,
ND--returning to town a week later to march in (maybe it is more
accurate to say "Be") the parade for the annual Buffalo Days
festival in Jamestown, ND.
Everyone
on the wagon train is expected to dress "Western"--men in
jeans and Western shirts and hats, and women in long skirts and
bonnets. There is a rule against T-Shirts with modern words like
"Hard Rock Cafe" and the kids are not allowed to bring their
walkman or gameboy. We were encouraged to bring our fiddles,
harmonicas and guitars for evening campfire singing. Yes, we paid to
do this, but it was very reasonable.
Was
this a vacation? Yes indeed. I came home exhausted,
because I walked a long way; but I also came home refreshed.
A
year ago I read a wonderful article by Letty Pogrebin in the New York
Times about vacations for people over 50. [NYT Sunday, April 21, 1996,
p.33] She writes, "Vacations give us something to look forward to
as a counterweight to the apprehension of our incredible shrinking
future....Travel allows one to feel new when it is no longer possible
to feel young." She goes on to explain that kids have daily
experiences from which they grow and learn, "while the rest of us
[adults] have to pursue the new, struggle against inertia and push
ourselves to keep growing, a task that gets more difficult as we
become more set in our ways. But when we take a trip and enter
unfamiliar settings, we reconnect with our childish sense of wonder
and discovery..." When we do this the clock slows down and
life seems to expand. Travel, she says, props up the sagging spirit
and compensates us for "losses we have yet to know."
Going
on a wagon train in North Dakota was a crazy way to vacation and yet
it was one of the most renewing seasons of my life. In four very
different ways I was enriched and stretched.
First
of all, I am a historian. This vacation was doing more than
reading or writing about history, it was literally "stepping into
it." After my week on the prairies I have a new respect for
my ancestors who left the comforts of New England parlors and the
stability of European villages to settle the American West. They
rode wagons and walked for weeks, even months, across the prairie.
The women maintained their families and created new households out of
the wilderness. My 1997 wagon train had a water truck and a
well-stocked chuck wagon. I had a map which told me just how
many miles we would travel before setting up camp. I flew back
to my modern house when it was over after seven days.
As
an historian I have read the diaries of women on the Western trails.
I have been in awe of their courage and their strength in the face of
very difficult circumstances. I know (in my head) what those
westward bound pioneers did to start a new life on the frontier, but I
did not really know. I did not know the way in which the wind blows
relentlessly hour after hour over those prairie grasses, so that when
you look out towards the horizon it does indeed feel like a vast ocean
of grass and sky. The waving grass and the haze in the distance where
sky meets land is very much like the vista of a sailor on a ship at
sea. No wonder they called those little covered wagons,
"prairie schooners." The early pioneers were leaning
unto the wind, "sailing" into uncharted "waters."
Kathleen Norris says, "For me, walking in a hard Dakota wind can
be like staring at the ocean; humbled before its immensity," She
notes that "I also have a sense of being at home on the
planet.... [because although] I live about as far from the sea as is
possible in North America, yet I walk in a turbulent ocean." [p.
41]
Walking
and riding in those uncomfortable wagons for a week gave me a new
sense of connection to the history of this country and my ancestors.
Thousands of women, men and children did the same thing. They
left the comforts of civilization and home to seek a new and better
life. Some of them were "running away." Some of them
were reaching for something new. All of them endured an
experience that I can now appreciate much better.
Second,
I not only learned about life on the nineteenth century prairie, I
really got away from my twentieth century life in Hartford, CT.
Except for a few people who asked me what I did in Hartford, I never
told most of the people on that wagon train that I was the president
of a seminary. Being the president of Hartford Seminary is a
great job, but it is always with me--and sometimes it is a burden.
People make a big deal about it, when I just want to be me.
So,
I put on my bonnet and out there on the prairie I was "Shirley's
sister from Connecticut." For a whole week I did not
telephone, e-mail, or fax. I took a book, but other than my
Bible, I did not read anything for the entire trip. The wagons
were too bumpy for reading, and when we got to camp there were chores
and other things to do. I did not write anything for a week.
I took a notebook to keep a diary about the trip (which I often do
when I travel), but for the same reasons I never wrote a thing until I
was in the plane flying home. This vacation was a TOTAL change
of pace. I got away from everything I am and do here. I
walked the trail and looked at the land and the sky as a different
person.
Third,
I not only left my Connecticut life behind, I was challenged to do
some things I had never done. I am a city girl. I grew up
in cities and, for example, I know very little about horses.
This wagon train, however, was centered on horses. When the
horses were tired we stopped. When the horses needed water, we
got them water. When we got to camp the first things we tended
to were the horses. I never realized the bonding that takes
place between horses and the people who depend upon them for their
lives. Each wagon had a teamster, or driver, and I got to know
our teamster well. He told me about his love of horses.
The second day on the trail I suddenly realized why truck drivers to
this day are called "teamsters"--even though they no longer
drive live horses.
I
did not ride a horse on the trail. Many people did. I
walked. I walked when it was cool and when it was hot. I
walked when it was wet and when it was dry. I walked when I was
rested and when I was very tired. I walked alone and with my
sister or other wagon train friends. I walked between 40 and 50
miles that week.
I
had been walking two miles a day during the months before the trip
"to get in shape," but out there on the prairie I learned
some things about stamina and getting your second wind. When I
was tired I rode in the wagon, but I welcomed the opportunity to be
physically stretched by walking, and walking, and walking.
I
lead a very sedentary life. My job (most of our jobs) do not
demand much of us physically. So at a very basic level this
vacation was good physical exercise. I wore my hiking books
under my long skirt and at the end of the week I not only felt
stronger, I was stronger. The sun and the wind were relentless
out there on the prairie! As a consequence I emerged from the
week with a body that was stronger and healthier.
Finally,
fourth, my week of walking on the prairie strengthened my soul as well
as my body. After that week on the prairie, I see the world,
God's world, with new eyes. In the great Dakota hymn which we
sang at the beginning of worship, there is an awe and humility about
being human that comes to you out there on the plains of North Dakota.
The native peoples capture that holiness in their stories and poetry.
Because in that setting it is easy to sing "Many and great, O
God, are your works, maker of earth and sky." Under that
"big sky" human creatures are little. Humans are
literally overwhelmed with the vistas and the scope of God's creation.
It is ordinary, not spectacular--but it is filled with mystery.
The
magic of night is a case in point. When the sun set on the
Dakota prairie the canopy of stars soaring over our little tent
village was exquisite. You look up and you want stare at it all
night, captivated like the flames of a campfire that keep you looking
for something that you would not even recognize if you saw it.
Most of us never "see" the stars in the city. We
cannot appreciate the brilliance of a full moon on a clear night.
After
my week under those stars I am clear that I do not want to live in the
Dakotas, but I need to visit there (and other places where God's
creation overwhelms us) from time to time to connect with the core of
reality. Kathleen Norris, once again captures this feeling when
she writes, "The land, the 360 degrees of unobstructed horizon
invites you to keep on walking." And when we return to the
shock of civilization, towns and other people, we discover that we
"want to remain in the open, becoming," as she says,
"something other than human under the sky." [p. 178]
The
Psalmists and the prophets have felt this awesome mysterious dimension
of life under God's heavens when they write,
"When
I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the
stars that you have established; what are human beings that you are
mindful of them, mortals that you care for them?." [NRSV Psalm
8:3-4]
or
"For
my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the
Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways
higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. [NRSV
Isaiah 55: 8-9]
I
want to close with some addition words from Letty Pogrebin, from her
article about vacations. They explain why this walk on the
prairie was such an important vacation for me.
"Whereas
young people take to the road to find themselves, most of us who are
older travel to lose ourselves. In a strange place where no one
knows us and our history, we are able, if only for a week, to reinvent
ourselves, to be ageless, to act as young as we feel. How
liberating it is to leave behind all one's telltale labels and social
insignia. When we get wherever we're going, nobody knows or
cares who we are and we don't have to do anything to maintain our
image. We can try new things, make fools of ourselves, fail
grandly and answer to no one....Travel may be more expensive than
everyday life, but that kind of freedom, that kind of freshness, is
priceless."
Amen.
