Sunday Favorites -- Spirit In The Sky

It's Sunday and time for Sunday Favorites, where Chari, from Happy to Design allows participants to share an old blog post with readers, while still taking Sunday off, by reposting an old post.

Years ago, as an over the road truck driver, I collected a few thoughts and stories from my journeys and travels. In my Sunday Favorites posts, I am sharing some of those stories.

This one was written after an adventure Diann and I had together. Those of you from Texas, and those who have visited there, will understand:

Spirit In The Sky

Montana calls itself "Big Sky Country" and it only takes one trip through Montana to understand why.  Imagine yourself driving under a bright blue inverted Tupperware bowl. Not the little cereal bowls, the big potato-salad-for-the-family-reunion bowl.  The Pop-enough-popcorn-for-a-double-feature-video-night-on-the-couch bowl.  You know the one I mean. 

Montana has a big sky all right.  A sky that stretches all the way from one edge of the horizon to the other. A sky that arches overhead in a vaulted ceiling of heaven.  An umbrella of atmosphere, holding the raindrops out, and the sunshine in.  A BIG SKY!

As big as the Montana sky is in the daytime, however, the Texas sky at night is bigger.  Texas night sky doesn't just reach to the edges of the horizon, it wraps around the bottom and comes back up the other side.  The Texas night time sky leaves no doubt that this world we live on is a tiny speck, in a vast and endless universe. The stars at night truly are big and bright, in the heart of Texas, and the rest of the state too!

And did I mention the darkness?  Texas Darkness makes pitch dark look like partly cloudy.  In the Northeast, (and I consider everything north and east of Saint Louis, Missouri to be Northeast), there is no such thing as dark.  When you drive down the road, as soon as the lights of one city disappear in your rearview mirror, the glow of the next appears in your windshield.  You never quite get away from the neon and fluorescence.  But in Texas?  In Texas, you can drive for days, for weeks, and never see a city.  Not a town, not even a farmhouse. 

So it was, that we drove through Texas, late at night, in the rain.  The clouds shut out even the stars, and the darkness became a beast, held at bay by two feeble headlamps. 

The rain had started innocently enough, as a gentle sprinkle, but had quickly evolved from a steady drizzle to a fierce downpour.  Windshield wipers slapped back and forth, moving water over the glass in a valiant, but futile attempt to keep it clear.  I leaned forward, peering through the rain, trying to see the road, looking for a place to stop for the night, or at least wait out the storm.

Suddenly, the night was transformed, instantly, by  a brilliant white light.  Every pebble on the roadside stood out in vivid relief, as the world glowed, and then, as suddenly as it had come, the light was gone and a great roar of thunder shook the very ground we drove on.  The thunderstorm went on for what seemed like hours.  Straining my eyes, to see through the inky blackness, only to be blinded by an overwhelming influx of lightning, and immediately returned to total darkness.

Finally, we found a place to park.  The parking lot of a What-a-Burger where we could sit and watch the storm, without the fear of driving off the road.

No fireworks display on the Fourth of July has ever lit up the sky like the lightning of a Texas nighttime thunderstorm.  No man-made pyrotechnics can compare with the splendor and beauty of those fingers of power, stretching from the very heavens to touch the earth.

If I ever had doubted the presence of a higher being, all doubt would have been washed away, as  I watched the sheer power and energy of that storm rage across the sky.

~{@ @}~ ~{@ @}~ ~{@ @}~ ~{@ @}~

Be sure and join me each Tuesday for Tuesday Trivia Tie-in, where readers are invited to share trivia and show off their treasures.


Read all about it here

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