The guy who said that must have lived on a plain. Where a sea of grass reaches long for its horizon. Where traveling is one enduring moment with only the rhythm of day and night to remind that time is still moving.
We're walking the empty quiet that is Fort Richardson, a place erected and filled to capacity with blue coated soldiers who would
reconstruct the South after the war to end all wars. Who would tame the uncontrollable frontier with its wild natives who wouldn't settle.
Deer tracks cover the ground inside the fort, and outside the walls the herds of deer watch us unafraid as we pass.
The only remnants of the chaos that reverberated here are neatly framed and hung in rows for us to idly read as a side note to our day.
And when you read the stories, look at how the hospital looms largest in this makeshift village, there is one thing that etches itself clear on every plaque engraving with too many numbers and too many commas,
War is costly.
Most of all in lives
Fear grasping at straws, willing to pay any cost for the holy grail of a secure and prosperous destiny, hoping to quench itself with words penned permanent in ink or walls built high in stone
Willing to let those walls keep out the world,
Until even the wide expanse of the plains can feel claustrophobic
Infinity can feel awful small inside a mind that believes someone else holds it's fragile destiny.
I think how war is not just on battlefields with grand uniforms and flying flags but in homes, in hearts, beating themselves fast and furious in the heat of injustice.
I watch my children go to war with each other, quick to flame over a perceived infraction
I tell my oldest how the forts I've erected in my own life compromise the integrity of my soil,
and how when they finally fall, I am that open plain, alive again, the spirited deer's hooves drumming their rhythm right over me.
I tell her how slippery the slope of entitlement can be and and how an open mind reaches as far as this plain can stretch
But mostly, I tell her how your destiny can be held by no man, no matter how powerful he seems. It is held by your God, whose power runs so deep and wide these plains offer only a glance into its expanse.
Some infinities are bigger than other infinities, darling, remember that and the perceived powers of man dissolve into the infinite plain of love that is your creator, your only true destiny .
Remember that and peace will find you in all your days.
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Location:Jacksboro, tx
