The Roadtrip Sage: When Silence Speaks (Day 2)

Hello morning! Hello Idaho! The most beautiful State I have ever been to, its roads lined with purple heather and mountains and fields everywhere. It made me feel...home.

It’s a waterslides in the rain kinda day.

You know that feeling? It’s actually better because of the rain! ...Not that it was raining, but those few hours driving through Idaho farmland had the same kind of magic.

I Feel Inspired Here!

And I haven’t felt that way in a very long time.

I also got to use the netty this morning, now that I finally found a place that has it free. But what I realized as I checked Facebook messages and emails was that, ultimately, I didn’t really care about any of it. What I’m doing right now is just so much bigger for me in this stage of my life.

At around 10 A.M., I hit Twin Falls, Idaho, population 34,389. And I fell in love. It had small town charm but with sprawling farmlands laid out on every side. The church was perfect, and the cemetery looked just like one in a movie, what with the hundreds of upright headstones with trees draping over them. A quote above a store: “Hot heads and cold hearts never solved anything.” A white farmhouse with green shutters. Green hay that stretched to the mountains and the sky. My favourite feather trees.

I do not know how it happened, but I fell in love here.

I will come back one day.

Today was also the day of driving through the Nevada desert for seemingly endless hours. It was 36 degrees and impossibly hot. I passed the time by singing “99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall” and playing games against myself and, when all of that ran out, I began memorizing Romans. I started back in September but stopped after awhile. I was happy to find that I had retained most of it and went from there. I saw truths in it that I never had before, despite saying it aloud hundreds of times, and was blown away by the Majesty of God.

When I finally reached California, I was so grateful for trees and green and shade that I nearly got out and kissed the ground. Trying to put unwanted thoughts out of my head, I left my thoughts blank for a long time before I was completely caught off guard.

Coming over a ridge, I was suddenly on top of a mountain and the horizon as far as I could see was pale blue mountains with a burning sunset behind them. And it was at this time that Silence spoke. He could have said anything to me, but instead He said nothing...and I felt the weights I’d placed on myself being removed as I drove. It was, well, brilliant.

I reached Redding by 9 P.M. and finally reached the destination I had been striving for: In-n-Out Burger! Oh. My. Gosh. You take the first bite and are blown away. Yet somehow the second is even better. And with every bite, it only gets better and better! My only regret was that I didn’t have someone to exclaim to with each new bite. Afterwards, I headed to Wal-Mart and once again crawled into the staggering heat of my backseat and let my body rest after more than 12 hours of continuous driving.