Right now I am truly exhausted. Daughter Jenny and I have just completed a road trip that covered a good chunk of the country over four days and three time zones, bracketed by moving all her stuff out of one apartment and into another (both on the second floor and a decent hike from where our rental truck was parked).

We began in Chicago this past Tuesday, picking up a 10-foot Budget rental truck and maneuvering it through traffic back to her apartment near Loyola’s campus. Just three of we most able-bodied women managed to load it up with all Jen’s worldly goods in about two hours. It then took us more than an hour to wend our way gradually west of the city and shed the toll roads (a quick observation: I am not sure what the advantage of toll roads is supposed to be, but the money doesn’t seem to be going towards maintenance; the “freeways” and interstates I travel out west are in generally much better shape and gas prices don’t seem to be much different — presuming some portion of gas taxes go to highway upkeep.) We followed I-80 west through Illinois and on into Iowa, crossing the wide and mighty Mississippi. We didn’t stop that evening until we reached Omaha, Nebraska, after crossing another river that figures large in our nation’s history — the Missouri.

Our road trip continued through all of a very rainy Nebraska the next day with an overnight stay in Cheyenne, Wyoming, that night and Ogden, Utah, the next. Yesterday drew us from Utah through Idaho and at last into Oregon, albeit in Pendleton, still a good three-and-a-half hours from our final destination in Portland. We averaged over 450 miles each day with just a few pit stops and pauses for some unusual roadside attractions now and then. I’ve made at least three other such trips across vast stretches of  this country in my life, and each one has reinforced in me a deep love and respect for the land and the courageous, curious and independent souls who struck out to explore and settle it when travel was a perilous and uncertain prospect indeed.

A few mental snapshots from this trip:

— Dark, towering sweeps of cloud looming over spring-green fields gleaming in bright sunlight slanting in from the horizon.

— Observing spring retreat as we climbed towards the Continental Divide at 7,000 feet. Trees and creek-bottom brush showed bare and brown as sea-level vegetation was two months ago, and wide sweeps of snow drifts still pushed up against ranks of snow fences ranged along the interstate.

— Grasses and wildflowers in reds, blues, yellows and whites rippling in strong winds that buffeted our little truck and left my hands aching from gripping the wheel to keep us running straight and true in our lane.

— Wide valleys of irrigated farmland in circles and squares in shades of brown and green stretched out below ridges of sagebrush and rugged volcanic rock.

— Ranks and ranks of deep-green, forested mountains showing no sign of mankind’s touch, capped with new falls of late-season snow.

There is something in the wide, expansive vistas of sky and cloud and landscape — mountains, high desert and deep valleys — that lifts my heart. I breathe more deeply and feel a mixture of awe, gratitude and peace as I gaze far out over this America. The pride I feel is not that of ownership; this is my country not because I own any part of it but because it possesses me. No matter where else I go in this world, this vast, lovely, wild, majestic place will live in me and call me back to it.  

My tip for this week? Take the time to get out and experience a place where you are the smallest thing in the landscape. See and feel how big and varied and beautiful your country is.

— Patty Vanikiotis, proofreader