Following the Light
As I drove home tonight, from the middle of the city towards the country, I realized how ten minutes, just ten minutes, will bring you into a totally different world, if you let yourself notice it.
The buildings and houses thin, the trees thicken, the streetlights go away. And then, suddenly, all you’re left with are the headlights of your car to guide you through the winding hills and trees and you notice how little distance you can really see ahead of you. And yet you rely on these two short streams of light, hoping they’ll give you enough warning, although it seems impossible when they’re so overwhelmed with darkness.
That’s when you miss the city and it’s lights and it’s flow. Because it’s safe and there’s a system, so it’s less likely for something surprising, something unexpected to happen.
The light turns red, you stop.
The light turns green, you go.
The light turns yellow, you slow.
We follow the lights, we always have and probably always will.
So when the lights are few, or when you only have two small beams that hardly reach in the vast darkness, I suppose it makes sense that a person will search for more lights to help them see or to lessen the anxiety of not knowing what’s ahead.
While searching for the lights of my neighborhood, wanting to get there quickly and safely, I found comfort in different lights instead, much further in the distance. These lights not only caught my attention but held it, not because they were brighter than the house lights resting on my familiar hill ahead, but because they were more beautiful, more wondrous than any man-made lights these hills held.
If there was ever to be an accident for me, out here on these winding roads, it will not be because of my inadequate headlights or those crazy woodland creatures jumping out of nowhere. It’ll be because of the stars that I crash, I’m certain of it. Because tonight, the winter sky had opened up in this dry, Montana winter to show it’s own lights. Thousands of blinking, sparkling, dancing lights…and I could not look away.
