Journey IX

“What are you going to do after work?”

“I think I am going to just start driving West into the wind.”

The day at work had been windy.

Nonetheless a heavy boredom with life as it was was setting in and the extreme winds were awakening some kind of adventure.

Call it the call of the wild.

I was in Grand Island a couple hours after I clocked out from work.

A thunderstorm had rolled in about the same time I did so I looked for a local dive bar.

After a year and a half of sobriety I had recently fell off the wagon.

My experience after legitimately getting sober has been the relapse initially is just as exciting, thrilling and terrifying as the old black out lifestyle used to be however the new sober habits and patterns mellow out whatever temporary self-destruction I am trying to tap into.

Nonetheless while a drunk I developed a certain high self-awareness understanding that drunk Jude is the only threat I ever contend with.

So when I walk into the cantina I am exuberant about the potential of the place and the experience and highly apprehensive about how I will behave. 

One hundred dollars later I walk out with tequila, beer, and nachos in my system.

I watched my first women’s sports program on television from start to finish.

LSU and Texas softball programs went at it and I think LSU won.

I had been talking with the male bartender about where he was from, where he was now and where he was heading.

I told him where I was from and that I liked the establishment.

A group of high schoolers dressed for prom came in and seated themselves in the back.

A young female photographer took pictures of two young female customers eating at the bar.

It was the free chips and queso they gave me when I walked in that I knew I wouldn’t be able to make it a one and done situation.

Out on the street I realised I needed to piss.

I locked in to find a restroom.

I was at the point of drunkeness where you are ninety eight percent coherent but that two percent is dialled in something fierce when it comes to point A meeting point B.

Bathroom is what I wanted so I honed in on finding an alley way.

The storm had passed and it was bright out being six o clock in the evening in April.

I wanted to make sure to not piss in an alley way and then get arrested by the cops.

Beside the alley way was a dive bar so I dived in.

The next day the Sandhills was my destination.

A purchase of a breakfast burrito, cup of Joe and portable toothbrush and mini toothpaste was my salvation.

I drove all the way through to Alliance, Nebraska.

In Alliance was Carhenge.

Something I had hoped I would never see.

Wherever you are, you are there and when I was there it was a windy blizzard and that made it alright.

I turned around and drove back onto the Sandhills scenic byway.

On the sides of the road were little gullies that all kinds of waterfowl mingled in.

A railroad ran alongside the highway.

Then hills of sand headed off in either direction as far as the highway nestled within them would let you see. If I had had a drone and sent it up in the air — it would have seen a bunch more of these hills — down on the highway I had as many as I could desire.

The beauty of forests, mountains, hills, streams, rivers, cliffs, oceans, deserts are all easily understood but recently I have developed a certain fondness for dirt.

Wyoming is full of dirt. There are parts of Wyoming where the only discernible topography is dirt. Nothing growing in it and no one around besides some possible antelope, sagebrush, road and sky. I think it is grand. 

That is what the Sandhills in Nebraska is — so much dirt.

There is some aquifer beneath the land that makes the land viable. 

There are houses, cabins and ranches in the hills.

Bodies of water, rivers, creeks, marshes, ponds, lakes are interspersed within this vast dunescape and plenty of shrubs and small plants grow out of the ground.

Horses and cattle can be seen taking advantage of the random vegetation.

Towns no one has heard of are on this highway. 

Mullen, Hyannis, I can’t remember any others.

Mulen is the biggest and Hyannis was the most scenic.

A gas station stood above a lake as the wind battered the door making it difficult to open and too easy to close.

While driving through the Sand Hills I thought about Wyoming.

Last summer I drove through Wyoming to go to my friends wedding in Montana.

I had driven past Lake Mac in Ogallala before getting to Wyoming.

I had driven past Kearney before getting to Ogallala.

In Kearney I bought an antelope plushie that drove with me on the dashboard through a hailstorm near Laramie, Wyoming and eventually landed in the hands of my young girl cousin at Christmas.

No antelope in the Sandhills landscape. I didn’t see any natural wildlife outside of the waterfowl which there was plenty of. The disparity of the landscape mixed with the abundance of life made the drive very satisfying and fulfilling.

I have a friend at work who likes to motorcycle Nebraska’s landscapes.

He told me he had never been on this particular route.

He had been around the Sandhills but not through them.

After talking it up for about ten minutes I caught myself and told him,

“I guess I don’t want to talk it up too much though,

You might take my word and head out that way,

Then be disappointed and say —

What the heck, it’s just a bunch of dirt!”