DAYS 63 & 64 - Crossing into Nebraska! - 1208 miles from home

Van Tassell is not the smallest town we've walked through in Wyoming (at population 22, it's easily three times as populous as Lost Springs) - but it is the last town we walked through. We crossed into Nebraska today. And suddenly, there's momentum. What an extraordinary feeling! Labor Day is behind us. The light is lowering. The air cracks a bit in the morning. The high plains of dust and sagebrush are yielding to rolling grasslands. We are almost at this journey's halfway point. Suddenly, momentum. Today, this morning, I had the sense that this pilgrimage has begun to carry me... as opposed to my carrying it. I'm so used to a life of pushing the river, but I'm fully in the river now. I'm wet up to my eyeballs. The current is strong, and it's carrying me.

From the very start of this journey the futility of pushing the river has been obvious - yet there hasn't seemed to be a way NOT to push. How do we accomplish anything without showing up with all of our determination - with all of our push, all of our flex and grit? And yet, all that flexing of muscles and gritting of teeth makes it impossible to be tender and soft enough to ever, actually, meet the world. Our accomplishments then can seem one-sided, lifeless and sterile. There's no intimacy and joy in that. There's no LIFE in our life, when we're pushing so hard.

In Christian terms this problem of pushing the river gets understood as the tension between faith and works. (In Zen we talk about a similar tension between "self-power" and "other-power.") To what extent do I need to push and strive and carry what matters? And, at the same time: to what extent is all that pushing and striving and carrying extraneous - a distraction, even, from the real truth of what matters?

There's a florist in Casper, WY called "Consider the Lilies" - and of course from a New Testament perspective, that's the central teaching relevant here: "Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin." What makes this life of mine so precious, so sacred, such a gift and a grace is that it just happens, moment after moment, breath after breath and step after step. I don't have to toil or spin. I don't have to do a dang thing. Every moment is a gift - that's why it's called (as Eleanor Roosevelt or Joan Rivers or Bill Keane or Master Oogway said) "the present."

But, of course, as a human I am precisely the sort of being that CONSIDERS things like lilies and breath and steps and rivers. And CONSIDERING, my friend, is a lot of work. (Oy! my brain hurts just considering how hard it is to consider everything!)

On a certain level, in order to be about connection and community, about intimacy, this Walk is going to have to walk itself. You cannot push the river. But at the very same time, there's no one else but me who is going to get up out of my sleeping bag, who's going to lace up my sneakers, who's going to walk these miles in my shoes.

Consider the pilgrim, how she stomps.

I have a new 'trail name' given to me by Bob: Pop Tart. Inspired by my recent deliriously happy confectionary post on TikTok. Bob says: "Pop Tart: 'cuz you pop around a lot, and you're TART!"

Walking back through Lusk, WY - en route to Nebraska. As I slow down, to really walk through the town, step by step, I fall more in love with it.

I'm smitten with Lusk, Wyoming. Can I buy this house?

Lusk is a city of contrasts - with its quaint quilt plaques and ye olde western town appeal....

Lusk, city of contrasts: along with ye olde charm, the Covered Wagon Motel has a bank of Tesla charging stations....

Goodbye, Wyoming. (The sunflowers beckon still....)

Hello to the good life in Nebraska.

We're walking the "Bridges to Buttes" Scenic Byway in NE - from the Wyoming border to Valentine, NE.

Outside Harrison, NE.

Harrison, NE. It's lunchtime and I'm in the very heart of town. Where is everyone?

Harrison, NE.

An inviting Harrison antique/junk shop. (That's a lot of wagon wheels.)

Welcome site for a pilgrim. Harrison, NE.

Nebraska tree and hay bales. (There is grass here! And trees! And undulating plains!)

After hundreds of miles of Angus, a herd of Hereford. (I still can't reconcile how much I love these sweet, slow and wary faces... with how much I love cheeseburgers.)