Potty Brown Creek Ranch

I walk with the dog across the pockmarked drive still moist with dew.  The musky sweet scent of sage, dirt and autumn’s dried leaves fill the air.  Birds are chirping gleefully in distant trees.  The dog stops her eager trot long enough to lift her nose.  I’m certain whatever she smells is much more than morning dew and dried leaves. 

Sunrise streaks across the endless sky, casting its brilliant colors far and wide.  It is possible to see the curvature of the earth out here on the high plains.  I stand at the end of the drive, looking west down the road.  This narrow strip of bare dirt travels in a straight line, piercing fields and pastures and dipping down into arroyos only to rise again to crest another hill.  Power poles dot the horizon.  They and this lonely dirt road are the only signs that maybe there are others out here in the sea of grass and stubble. 

I am filled up by this nothingness.  I drink in the orange streaked endless sky and wrap my body in the barren fields that surround me.  My insignificance, so ardently felt now, somehow nourishes my soul.  I am filled with wonder and hope. I want to drink in the sky's colors and swallow the sweet musky air.  I want to lie down and be absorbed whole by this barren land.  I want to feel it in my bones, and have it course through my veins. 

I don't know why this empty place feels so familiar to me.  Yet, it does.