Trip: drive a buttercream truck
The end of a year. A WHOLE YEAR! This one was fast. FAST.
Fast, I tell you.
Blogger Gwen Bell is hosting a challenge to recap the year in 31 days, this month of December.
I love recaps. Circles completed. Filling in those little dots on multiple-choice tests with a number two pencil. And imagine my delight when I saw that I would be the 37th person to sign up. I like the number 37. It all seemed right.
And so, for the month of December, a look back.
December 1. Trip. What was your best trip in 2009?
I travel a lot. Some months, a trip each week. Here, then in some liminal space between here and there, then there, then liminal again, and back home. Repeat.
In each trip, there are memorable moments, people who stand out for me, friends made at 37,000 feet, flights missed and adventures resulting from those misses. Sometimes I track how many people I can make laugh in airports. (Some days, that is a big challenge).
So while there are many trips—Bend, Edmonton, Deerfield, Toronto, Tybee, Chicago, and so many more—that could stand in this place as “best trip,” there are two that immediately came to mind when I read this prompt.
The first was a trip to Hastings, Nebraska, in June of 2009. The second was a series of flights to Chicago in October of 2009. I've written about the magic of those flights before. It was a big lesson about being open to the gifts we are given. About seeing gifts where only pain appears to be. A big lesson.
And so, let me write a bit about Hastings.
Work called me there. I would meet amazing people, reconnect with high school and college friends, and eat on a patio in Lincoln the best Indian food I can remember. There is much about that trip that resonated, yes.
A beautiful series of barns. Prairie Loft was the name of the place we would inhabit for two days, engaging teachers and community members in the art of learning. Playing, laughing, learning together. It was magical.
The stark white barns standing against green, green. Barns tall, barns stubby, barns with wooden stalls. A wedding had taken place in the largest of the barns the day before, magic fairy lights still hung in the rafters where barn swallows dove and lit.
Our barn was open, a rug on the floor to cover the dust, with folding chairs in a circle around it. A long table covered in flowers and beautiful old quilts on one side. Gorgeous vegan food would appear from the simple kitchen made by Lisa and Megan, kitchen goddesses and the hosts of our time there. 
One morning, we arrived to find them in aprons making homemade pancakes on hotplates in the barn for everyone.
In every group, there is a wisdom that emerges. Sometimes, when the conditions are right—say, when you are in an open gorgeous barn with blue skies and barn swallows swooping past every once in a while and when your belly is full of homemade pancakes cooked in the open air on a small hotplate and covered with jelly somebody canned in their kitchen on the prairie, then there is more wisdom than usual, full rich and filling the crisp air. This was such a time.
And in every group, there are people who speak truth to power and big things can happen. And people who jump in not knowing and not needing to know. And people who sit and resist and finally join. And people for whom the meaning is much, much bigger than what is actually happening in the room. Or barn, for that matter.
And so, David and I love this work of unfolding a space for people to wander around in, find meaning in, explore, get hot and messy in, and build relationship in.
The afternoon of our first day, I realized that the old 1940s gorgeously refurbished truck in the parking lot belonged to a man named Jack, someone I had immediately been drawn to in the group.
“Jack,” I said to him at the break. “That your truck?” “Yep,” he said. “It is. Chevy.”
“You think I might stand up on the sideboard runner thing after the session and have somebody take my picture on it?” “Better,” he said. “I’ll take you for a ride in it tomorrow.”
GET OUT! I was thinking to myself. REALLY??!?!
“Thanks, Jack,” I said. “I would really love that.”
It was a truck the color of butter, all rounded at the edges.The next day, as we approached the afternoon break, Jack motioned for me to come outside with him. “Gonna do better than a ride,” he said. “You’re gonna drive.”
GET OUT! said the yelly voice in my head.
“No, Jack!” I protested. “I couldn’t! Just a ride will be great!”
“Nope,” he said, handing me the keys. “You’re gonna drive. And what’s more, you’re gonna drive by yourself.”
I can’t remember being happier or more excited than I was at that moment in that butter cream truck in that sun surrounded by those barns full of those pancakes, holding Jack’s keys in my hands. It wasn’t just the truck, though that was part of it. It wasn't just the blue sky, though that was part of it. It wasn't just those white barns, though that was part of it. It wasn't just the pancakes, though that was part of it, too.
It was that this man entrusted something he clearly loved to a stranger.
I took off down the driveway of the Prairie Loft with country music playing on the radio in the truck, little round dials on the tiny dashboard. The windshield was two tiny panes of glass. I turned on the wipers just to see them work, each coming from the outside of their respective pane to sweep over the tiny expanse of window down and then back out again.
I turned left out of the driveway onto a dirt road, beeped the beepy horn and waved back to Jack, still watching me go.
Suddenly I was on a long road in sunlight driving down a straight, straight stretch of land surrounded by green corn on either side of it, under a blue sky. Sitting up high in that seat with my hands on the steering wheel, I cried because it was all so, so beautiful. '
(Written to Foy Vance’s album, “Hope”)
#Best09
