A Place Unmapped.
Maps give the illusion that there are no more secrets, that everything has been discovered, and that all is well ordered. But there are places and things that those maps do not show. I know. I have been there.
This morning I left home with the intent of finding Immanuel Lutheran Church, where my friend Winston would be preaching. I left home in plenty of time to get there and mingle before the service. Unfortunately, I knew but loosely where I was going, and I did not have any maps in my car.
After a smooth beginning on the wide, well marked, roads of the city, I departed onto the infinitely wilder, narrow, arrow straight yet somehow winding, roads of the country. The signs became smaller, and went by much too fast for a careful perusal. Despite my great care, I was soon lost on the back roads, little more than a single lane wide, with not another soul in sight for miles.
It was there, lost in the fields of Indiana, that I found a place not marked on maps. A strange and wonderful place, which may be found only by those who get lost on an early Sunday morning.
I had found a land where there were no posted speed limits, wide open sight-lines, and not a soul around. Time stood still as I swept past it, covering distance in a way that maps--or at least Google maps--would tell us was impossible.
With nothing but my sense of direction to guide me, and with a rapidly dwindling tank of gas, I realized that I would never make it to my destination without a resupply. I count it a stroke of divine providence that one of my wrong turns took me right into Hoagland. With a fresh tank of gas, I returned once more into the wide unknown of roads whose names are forgotten, and whose traffic is apparently too light to attract state troopers.
I barely made it in time, and was seated only just as the service started. Things happened thereafter, one of them being a sermon by Winston, which was followed swiftly by me slipping out to return to the city.
This time, the apprehension which I first felt when I found myself on these narrow, aged, tracks had disappeared. There was only anticipation and exhilaration. With windows down and music up, I soared along the strange paths with a familiarity I had previously been lacking. I knew their twists and turns; their secrets and hidden ways. I followed them until at last they yielded me back to civilization. I was sorry to leave them, but the magic of the place rested in the early solitary morning. As the world woke, that place would disappear one way or another.
Far better to leave the trail with its magic intact, than to watch it fade around me.
For a little while I wandered in the place with no speed limits, sometimes lost, sometimes certain. It was the adventure of a morning. I found a place that is not on your maps, that is not on any maps, that exists only fleetingly, and that reveals itself only to the wanderer.
This morning I left home with the intent of finding Immanuel Lutheran Church, where my friend Winston would be preaching. I left home in plenty of time to get there and mingle before the service. Unfortunately, I knew but loosely where I was going, and I did not have any maps in my car.
After a smooth beginning on the wide, well marked, roads of the city, I departed onto the infinitely wilder, narrow, arrow straight yet somehow winding, roads of the country. The signs became smaller, and went by much too fast for a careful perusal. Despite my great care, I was soon lost on the back roads, little more than a single lane wide, with not another soul in sight for miles.
It was there, lost in the fields of Indiana, that I found a place not marked on maps. A strange and wonderful place, which may be found only by those who get lost on an early Sunday morning.
I had found a land where there were no posted speed limits, wide open sight-lines, and not a soul around. Time stood still as I swept past it, covering distance in a way that maps--or at least Google maps--would tell us was impossible.
With nothing but my sense of direction to guide me, and with a rapidly dwindling tank of gas, I realized that I would never make it to my destination without a resupply. I count it a stroke of divine providence that one of my wrong turns took me right into Hoagland. With a fresh tank of gas, I returned once more into the wide unknown of roads whose names are forgotten, and whose traffic is apparently too light to attract state troopers.
I barely made it in time, and was seated only just as the service started. Things happened thereafter, one of them being a sermon by Winston, which was followed swiftly by me slipping out to return to the city.
This time, the apprehension which I first felt when I found myself on these narrow, aged, tracks had disappeared. There was only anticipation and exhilaration. With windows down and music up, I soared along the strange paths with a familiarity I had previously been lacking. I knew their twists and turns; their secrets and hidden ways. I followed them until at last they yielded me back to civilization. I was sorry to leave them, but the magic of the place rested in the early solitary morning. As the world woke, that place would disappear one way or another.
Far better to leave the trail with its magic intact, than to watch it fade around me.
For a little while I wandered in the place with no speed limits, sometimes lost, sometimes certain. It was the adventure of a morning. I found a place that is not on your maps, that is not on any maps, that exists only fleetingly, and that reveals itself only to the wanderer.
:)
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