We were on the banks of the Missouri, standing on ground trod by Lewis and Clark and unknown numbers of America's pioneering wayfarers. Horses stomped and snorted in the wet morning air. Families encircled a haggard clergyman atop an upturned tub. The prairie unfolded west toward the great seam made by the meeting of earth and sky. Sunlight was edging over the curve of the world.
The preacher's weary eyes lit up as he spoke. "Oh lord, we thank you this morning for the glorious day you have made, the men and animals that stand here in the middle of this great continent with your fire in their souls."
No one expected such language. He was from a little church on the bluff above the river and appeared to have grown tired waiting for god to provide for his small congregation. His words, though, were magic and as strong as faith.
"We thank you for those who came before us and made this proud and humble nation," he continued. "We are blessed by adventures, those we have known and the one about to begin. Our hearts are filled with wonder at the glory of all beasts and especially the beauty and power of horses. Thank you, lord, for horses, and the men and women and the dreams they have served. We thank you also, lord, for our own bright eyes and coursing blood, our daily bread, deep rest, quiet thoughts, and the promise of another 'morrow. We thank you, lord, for the sheer joy of living."
"Amen," was mumbled lowly from the gathering.
A man rose up to a saddle and was handed a bag, whistled loudly, and rode west with the rising sun at his back. A few dozen of the gathering applauded. They were making an historical run along the course of the old Pony Express, the briefly-lived mail service from the 19th Century. A relay of men and horses conveyed letters from the settled heartland across the badlands and mountains to Sacramento and on to San Francisco in a matter of days. Telegraph wire had not yet been strung.
We followed with our camera and our trucks. One of them said he had read that for every mile traveled westward there were almost two dozen pioneers who had died along the Oregon Trail. I wondered about the numbers of Native Americans that had perished with disease and conflict and loss of habitat. We rationalize great sadnesses by calling them destiny.
The horses found the North Platte and hugged the sandy river shore. The High Plains of Nebraska rose imperceptibly to meet the Rockies in Wyoming. The horizon was barren of all but crops, a few sand hills, and scattered cottonwoods leaning out over the water course. I followed these adventurers across the mountains and down through the Great Basin and marveled at the pitch and roll of the land and the magnificent country in which I was born.
The feeling never dies.
I remember it standing in the rain next to a broken down motorcycle outside of Grand Junction. I needed to be figuring out a temporary fix to a broken casket and I was transfixed by the plateaus above the Colorado River and the peach and apple orchards improbably flourishing on the edge of a desert. I have known this same emotion rolling down the highway south of Winslow, feeling the cool air surrender to the heat rising from the floor of the Arizona desert. The engine barely made a sound and the bike leaned easily along the trail among the Ponderosas.
I remember it, too, around midnight outside of a tent in Monument Valley, Utah, the first time I had experienced total silence and had looked in every direction and had been unable to see any light other than what was falling from stars. In the bottom of the Grand Canyon, sleeping on the sand near Phantom Ranch, the mighty Colorado continued its amazement with an endless flow of power, countless millennia old before it was beheld by humans, still eternally swift and sure.
There is also the smell of orange blossom in Florida and the sound of music and the taste of gumbo in Louisiana and the perfect desolation of Big Bend and the Trans-Pecos. I think of the snow at Lake Tahoe and floating down beneath the clouds as the lake rises between the trees while you glide the whiteness. I remember the painful distance runs along Mission Bay and up the hill through Balboa Park and riding the Harley up the Pacific Coast Highway and sleeping on the beach at Pismo.
Never do I forget crossing the Gulf of Mexico with a few friends on a sailboat and the push from the dark Mississippi as we left the coast to our starboard and made a beat toward the blue water. I will always remember getting snowed in at the Continental Divide on the Fourth of July, watching the snow melt while fishing for trout and the time my boyhood pal Butch and I took our first plane ride at age 18 in a thunderstorm across the Grand Canyon and I swore I was never going to board another plane. I will always be able to visualize the streets of Santa Fe and the perfect light against the adobes and the time we all stayed on the Outer Banks in the Carolinas and wild mustangs still roamed the dunes.
I recall all these memories and more every Thanksgiving. And I think of all those that are yet to be made. I am grateful, also, for the friends and family and people who love me and, inexplicably to me, are pleased that I am in the world.
But none of this is possible without my country. My American blessings are uncountable.