There’s a woman standing in a parking spot on the street, holding up her right hand in a “stop” gesture to a driver attempting to park. She’s saving the spot for a friend. In her left hand, she holds her cell phone. The driver, gripping the steering wheel with his right hand, also has a phone raised in his left. They’re filming each other.
I pulled into the visitor’s parking lot at Devil’s Tower National Monument and noticed there were only a couple of spaces left. A small car followed behind me as I made my way toward the open spots. We both pulled in. Full house.
The Tower loomed overhead, its ancient form quietly transcending and silencing the stream of thoughts running through my mind.
I creaked out of the van, my legs tingling in that relieved, grateful way they do after a long drive. The woman from the car beside me stepped out too. We both stretched, eyes drawn upward to the Tower. We exchanged a brief smile; a shared nod of luck at having found parking in the nick of time.
I stood in the breakfast room of a weathered motel in Amarillo, waiting impatiently for the coffee maker to finish its cycle. I had no real schedule that day, no urgent destination; just a restless need to move. This was the return leg of a cross-country trip, a journey that had started as a favor to a family member and turned into a chance to explore before heading home to work and routine.
Imagine you’re at a grocery store, rushing to pick up a few things on your way home from work.
You roll your cart down the frozen food aisle, thinking it might be a good idea to grab something quick and easy for dinner. As you weigh your options among the overpriced microwave meals, you notice a woman slowly pushing her cart nearby. She’s just disconnected from a phone call and looks deeply troubled.