Set the Night on Fire

Again

I was driving up to Decorah for the hundredth time, through that driftless topography of Eastern Iowa, when I found myself driving along a stretch of road I had no recollection of. I topped a rise and there in a clearing was a concrete foundation, the remains of a barn, sans roof, and a rotted corral fence still standing and all around trees and all around the trees fields of corn framed by gravel road. This clearing. It was a place heavy with ghosts. Here is where someone built their home. Here is where they kept their cattle. Here is where they spent their days. Days and days and days. Out to the barn. Out to the field. Back home. Back home. I could feel it. That repetition of days. That humanity. Sunup. Wanting. Having. Sunset. Wanting. Hoping. Not having. And then the road again. That place was gone.

When you see something for the first time, you see the truth of it. The tragedy of it. If Google had directed me along the same path I usually take up north, I would’ve passed those places I have come to expect, places that have ceased to amaze me. Wadena, town of the lighted cross. I pass by. Someone clears away the brush around the cross. Town of the ball diamond. I pass by. Someone makes the schedule for little league play. Town of lawn mower repair place. I pass by. Someone changes the spark plug in the Briggs & Stratton. I move on. Someone stays. Shops at Dollar General.

There’s a yearning in me. To stay in Wadena. To be the one who stays. Who changes that spark plug.

When I was young, I thought all those songs about being on the road were fiction. All those bards. Those towns, all looking the same. Bad Company. On the road again. Willie Nelson. Jackson Browne on the bus. He has Richard Pryor on video. No one knows the gypsy’s name. Each freight car looks the same. Crossroads, will you ever let Duane Allman go? Passing through. Moving through. And then. All of a sudden. It’s Sunday morning. And there’s the smell of someone frying chicken. And it takes Kris Kristofferson back to a thing he lost somewhere along the way.

Where do we fit in? Where is the place we belong? Where can we stay? With all our heart. Can we stay anywhere? With all our heart?

The first time I rode my Kawasaki KZ1000 west. The first time I came though the Bighorn Mountain Range. Came sweeping down into a valley. Stopped at a little mom and pop gas station. “Jesus,” I said to the attendant. “What,” he said. “It’s so beautiful,” I said, looking back up toward those orange peaks. “Oh,” he said, “it’s all right.”

The first time I flew over Italy. Which was the fist time I ever flew over anything other than the continental United States. And the sun was coming up. At midnight Iowa time. Through the porthole of that jet. And the plane trees. And the hills. And the stone pines. Way down there. In that Garden of Eden. I cried. It was so beautiful.

The first time. Is the true time. It’s the way to see everything. To be struck with awe. Always. Of course. We have names for people like this. We used to call them idiots. That was an official medical designation. Then mentally retarded. Also a medical designation. Then intellectually challenged. I don’t even know what we call them now. What to call someone who completes their routine always for the first time. What to call someone so amazed by the beauty of the world they forget to take it for granted? Neglect to excuse what once made them cry for the beauty of it.

How to be amazed. And survive. How to stay. And move through. Both at once. How to move beyond these crossroads. Come home to sweet Melissa. How to stay within the beautiful place. And move past it. To the next beautiful place. That corner in Winslow Arizona. Here in Allentown. Here in this dirty old town. Heard a siren from the docks, sings Shane MacGowan. Saw a train set the night on fire. Smelled the spring on the smoky wind. Where we can stay. And move through.