Wide Open Spaces

Have you seen Disney’s movie Cars? It’s about a stuck-up race car who discovers that life isn’t all about him. Lightening McQueen finds himself stranded in a little run-down, desert town that’s barely still on the map. The town judge sentences the racecar to community service as punishment for his reckless driving the night he got separated from his transport truck.

“Help! I’m in Hillbilly (opposite of heaven) !” He yells, totally disgusted with the backward towns people.

“Sarah,” My sister asked from the living room where the movie was playing;

“Is that how you felt when we first came here?”

“Yep!” I laughed from kitchen.

I can’t tell you how many times McQueen’s same thought has run through my mind since we moved up here… (Okay not exactly the same, but pretty close at times.)

Spokane in and of itself isn’t a real wild city. But in the almost four years we’ve lived in the Inland Northwest, I’ve discovered:

Why country music was written.

That there are still unpaved highways in the US.

Met characters I formally thought only existed in books.

And learned an entirely new way of life. A different, hard, but beautiful and rewarding way of life.

Now when I see a red barn in a golden wheat field I think of freedom. Our nation is built on the backs of men and women who were willing to work the land. Who prayed for good harvests, rain, and were there to help neighbors through tough times.

Perhaps this “great recession” is bringing us back to taste those days. They are bittersweet. Life can be tough sometimes. But its so worth the living.

The racecar in the Disney movie learned to love the people he was trapped with, and in the end he didn’t want to leave.

Oh, I miss California sometimes. I miss the people, the culture, the fast-pace life. I could live there again. But I have fallen in love with the mountains and wide open spaces. And the people who make this part of the world unique. Can you have two earthly homes? I think so…