“Loving Soybeans”

Day 35. 66 miles from Davenport to Solon.

Today a moment of stillness came upon me.

I had been biking on a state highway for about 50 miles, largely without a shoulder. It was one of the scariest days of riding. I spent most moment with my eyes glued to the tiny two inch rear view mirror mounted to my handlebar.

I saw so many different animals today — most of them were dead, roadkill, slaughtered ominously on the pavement beneath my rolling tires.

I finally got off the highway and onto a gravel backroad which would take me the last 10 miles to my host’s home. And I paused for a moment to catch my breath.

As I looked out onto the soybean field in front of me, temptations of abandoning the trip crept into my heart. Today was too much. I was tired, I was scared. I felt like I had lived a decade in a month, I was burned out. I maybe a quarter done, maybe a third. I was so far from the start or finish… the coasts were so far I would need to stick my finger toward the ground to point to them. They were on another side of the world.

But suddenly, a deep calm entered the air.

I can only describe the feeling as this — imagine you are drowning in an ocean tempest for hours, hopelessly swimming toward land. And finally, the waves have the mercy to let you surface for a breath. And as your head breaks the surface, beaten and broken, you see the most enchanting, vibrant, heavenly sunset of your life. It all comes to you. A deep sitting serenity, a godliness has ironically been there the whole time, as you have suffered in chaos. The beauty of it all captures you.

I gazed at the soybean fields and the defeaning vastness of it all thundered through my soul. In that potent silence, tears of awe and relief wandered cautiously from my eyes.

I watched the wind caress small waves that undulated through the soybean fields. It was so beautiful.

I began to count the row of soybeans…there had to be millions in that field, perhaps tens of millions.

I could not believe that those fields had eacaped my admiration for so long … I had biked past hundreds of miles of these fields.

So there I stood, one cyclist and a million soybean plants. In that sweet stillness, for the first time, I took it all in.