Joy comes in all kinds of shapes and sizes. Here’s one example of my joy this week: Early Friday morning Karl and I drove out to the desert and found a spot on a ridge above a ‘wash’ to watch about a quarter of a mile section of a 425-mile race. The racers were souped-up trucks and bugs – fitted to fly across sand and rocks at crazy speeds. These are dune buggies on steroids. Very loud, very fast. I did a little math, the winner of the race averaged well over 82 miles per hour for over 5 hours. While that sounds terrifying, given the chance, I’d like to take a ride – it looked like such fun.
Anyway, for our part where we sat, it was kind of like watching a very odd parade. The race is a timed event and the vehicles all had a staggered start, with a vehicle starting every 30 seconds, so mostly we only saw one at a time. The track called for each racer to make three laps so we saw some (not all!) three times. For long periods of time there would be nothing to see except the sky, the quiet desert, and the hills and rocks surrounding us on the horizon. Then we’d hear a noise and get to watch a vehicle fly by for about 7-9 seconds.
It was more fun than maybe it sounds. In the interims, we enjoyed each other, we relished in surveying our surroundings, and we talked with fans around us. Thankfully, most of the people nearby us were knowledgeable – this wasn’t their first desert race – so we learned a lot and asked a lot of questions.
How was this a joyous experience? In many ways. First, the desert. I’m not sure I’m ready to call the powdery dust and scrubby plants populating the area beautiful, but there is a lot to see and take in. The expanse of it reinforced for me about how big God is. The variety and heart of living things holding tenaciously onto life despite the extremes of dryness, heat, and cold give me hope and new resolve to endure the hard places in my own life. Then there’s the race. For a day I was away from politics and intrigue. Instead, we were immersed in simple and exhilarating man vs nature, man vs machine, and man vs himself contests that celebrated all that is good and creative and adventurous in humans. We met people who were friendly and excited about their lives for the day, and unafraid. We breathed fresh, though dusty, air and felt the sunshine on our skin. It was a good day.
