The Middle of Somewhere

Wow, and it has been awhile.  Coming back to this blog feels like walking into a big, empty warehouse with a layer of dust on the floor, where everything you do and say echoes.  Like this:

Hello!

Hello!

Hello!

Hello!

Hello...

Anyway, enough of that.  I guess I owe you an update.  I guess friends and family all pretty much know that we have moved (finally) and are adjusting to a very unique new home.  We are now living near an Indian Reservation and for the first time in our lives, are learning what it feels like to be in the minority.  Our neighbors and pretty much everyone out here are/is (?) exceedingly friendly, and while we live almost an hour from a grocery store, I've been surprised at how little we feel isolated here.

When we found out that we would be coming here, one of my friends looked the place up on the internet and said something to the effect of 'Wow, now you're really living in the middle of nowhere!'  I half-jokingly called our last home the middle of nowhere and now I feel like such a city kid for even thinking that.  It was a city with a population of ten-thousand and Walmart was within fifteen minutes of our home.  I guess I was noticing the cows practically in our backyard and the miles and miles of farmland all around us.

Now, we are in ranch country.  We have a gas station, a convenience store, and not very much else, but as we were driving up the little mesa that we would soon call home, the words that passed through my mind were 'the middle of somewhere.'  This is a tiny, spread out community, but we have a library, a school district and a church - three churches, actually, and counting.  These crazy dirt roads that wind every which way through miles of sagebrush and creosote lead to homes with people in them.  I know - what a groundbreaking revelation I've stumbled upon, but I'm understanding, finally, what it means, both to be lost in a big city and to be lost in a small town.

Maybe the fact of the matter is that I am just now learning to appreciate the immense value of individuals, while at the same time, I am all the time more amazed by the sheer immensity of the human race.  How can there be so many?  And how can each one be an individual, a child of God with thoughts, feelings, a past, present and future?  I feel like I'm constantly thinking back on Alan Paton's words - "Why fear the one thing in a great city where there are thousands and thousands of people?"

I wish I could say that I have taken pictures, to show you a little bit of where we are and what it's like.  I haven't.  As a matter of fact, my husband found my camera only yesterday.  I thought it had been lost in the move.  We have a nice camcorder that takes beautiful pictures, but I have now admitted to myself that I am, in some deep part of my soul, a little tiny bit afraid of the camcorder.  I'm working on it.  For now, though, I'll just share with you what few pictures I have taken and try to give a little bit of description of the rest:

The view from our front porch.

Most of our windows are east-facing, so we get a nice, sunny kitchen, living room, and master bedroom (yes!  We have a master bedroom!) in the mornings.  The only part of the house that remains cold is the nursery, so we've had to be a little bit innovative there.  I noticed when we first got here, in the beginning of August, that shortly after the light hit our window shades, they turned pink.  My mom, who grew up not far from here, says that the vibrant sunrises and sunsets have to do with the dust in the air.

Another thing that we have learned is that there are lots and lots of thorns.  It's almost impossible to keep them out of the house.  We quickly found that we could mitigate the problem by taking our shoes off at the door, but they still pop up quite often.  I have pulled several from our little Thunder's mouth already.  The thing that I miss most about home so far is, well, the color green.  There is green here.  It's actually been much greener than we expected, thanks to the late summer monsoons which come up this way from Mexico.  There's nothing like a good thunder storm and we've had dozens of those already.  Still, I grew up in the mountains, minutes from beautiful hiking trails and the beauty of this place is something to which I need to adjust.

I mentioned before that we live up on a mesa.  That's a treat all by itself.  I always thought that you had to be rich or at least well established to live in a house on a hill.  I guess not!  There are plenty of hills and the red, orange and yellow rock formations for which the southwest is known around here.  We have a view of the interstate, the railroad, and quite an expanse of land below us during the day, and during the night, we have an amazing view overhead.  Despite the streetlamps throughout our little neighborhood, the lack of surrounding city lights allows us to see the stars more clearly than in either of our previous homes.  Ben and I slept out on our porch a couple of weeks ago to look for constellations and planets.  It was then that I learned that the constellation which I have always thought to be the little dipper is, in fact, not.  As it turns out, north does not really mean 'up.'  Who knew?

I suppose I've rambled on long enough.  For those of you who read this (I think there's actually only one person), the blog is still enduring its identity crisis, as evidenced by its makeover, name change, etc., so if the posts are somewhat all over the place, that's why.  Nevertheless, I've decided to give the whole blogging thing a second try.  I suppose that's all for tonight.  Over and out.