Day Fifty-Nine

I headed out early this morning—so early that the hotel cooks weren’t even serving breakfast yet. Dr. Ruston and Marisa wanted me to wait, but I had been cooped up with nothing to do for a whole day, and it had been well over a week since I had made any progress toward my goal of skirting Don Reymundo’s lands and getting back on track toward Kentucky. So after a sentimental farewell, in which my two benefactors generously refused to accept so much as a silver coin from me, I got on the road, heading south.

It was a pretty bleak land that I was in, now that I was out of the mountains and on the southern plains.














I didn’t see signs of other people or domestic animals out here. So I ate out of my packs, gathered snow when I could, to spare my water for when I might need it later, and enjoyed a peaceful day. It was just me, Flecha and the whole majesty of the desert.

And then toward evening, I came upon the most amazing place.















I don’t know what to make of it. It’s like a city or a monument, but it appears to be a natural part of the land.














There was no one around, although there were signs that this may have once been a park of some sort. Would the people of an earlier generation thought it worth the trouble to come all the way out here to this place, when they had magic for the asking inside their own electric homes? I really don’t know.














But as I wandered around, staring in wonderment at it all, a deep peace came over me.

I’m camping here for the night, in the shadow of all this absurdity. Clearly God has a sense of humor. So maybe the strange shape of my own life is by design, too. Maybe it's not intended to torment me, but to make me think and wonder, to sometimes take my breath away, and other times make me smile.

What an amazing world this is!