by Joilene Rasmussen

Created on: August 09, 2008

Traveling Moon: Walking at Night on the Colorado Plains

The milk from the goddess' breast pours out over the sky - a bite from a vicious child turned to something beatiful. The droplets have hardened into stars, arching like a gateway to some long-lost ambition. I walk and I walk, yet the entrance stays as far off as ever. What would it be like, to enter that gateway, and see through to the other side? Would I see the characters that starred in the myth? Would I see God?

But I am earthbound, and the gravel road stretches, gray, into shadows a few yards ahead. Clouds to the north obscure the horizon, and move slowly, like a herd of cattle, to cover the Milky Way and the moon. The wind freshens, kicking up scents of corn silk and dust, of horse sweat and sage. They mix with a prickling sensation in my sinuses, and I feel myself nudged from behind by the breeze. I turn to face it, knowing that now the moon is hidden, and therefore my sense of travel is momentarily allayed - the moon often says, "Go."

I wonder if this great openness, this plain with the moon urging, "Go!" above it, was what pushed pioneers west past the river, then the mountains...was what pushed Columbus west past the ocean. Perhaps he kept on, in the face of starvation and misery and nothingness, because he knew the moon would not say "Go!" to someplace hopeless.

If a night as wide and clear as this did urge him on, then God bless it, because now I'm here. My family for four generations back has found strength to persevere in this land, under nights such as this one. We have walked under the stars to solace ourselves with the thought that others have gone on, and triumphed, and that with tomorrow will come a way to begin anew for us, too. The wind may blow away our aspirations, just like the sand from the pasture, but the night always brings a message to try again.

Hopes have always been as alive as cutworms out here. The clouds blow in fresh thoughts, and I feel a rain drop. As I extend my arms to feel them increase, I hear them spatter against the fields. They pockmark the ground, leaving it scarred like a disease might a face, because there proves not enough of them to make it smooth, to gladden it. Still, it is a beginning.

And now the moon glides back, shedding clouds, which wander away wordlessly.

I turn south and home again. I'll let my brain sort out in dreams my inspiration to go forth into tomorrow.

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