Last night we packed up ourselves, our dog and everything but the kitchen sink and loaded it all into my magic car (that's my new-to-me minivan with automatic everything at the push of a button). This morning at 4 a.m. we set off through gently falling snowflakes down the road towards California.
It took Danny and I about 5 and a half minutes to fall back to sleep, while my husband (the drivin' fool) enjoyed the quiet early morning road.
It wasn't until 7 a.m. that I was conscious again, but man once I was, it was uh-mayzing. I groggily turned over to see my dog's nose about 3 inches from mine (not so amazing) and when I looked out the window, almost like a vertical wall in front of me were the snow-covered mountains of Raton Pass with patches of black wet rock showing through here and there, all blanketed in a haze of fog. The quiet that fog creates seemed to reach all the way inside the car and comfort this slow waker-upper.
After a few turns we came over the top of the pass and through the cloud we'd been driving in. The whisps of cloud gave way to pink light and layers of pink mountains behind the downhill slope of the road and the hills around it. Birds dove and rose and wove around each other in a dance that seemed to be saved and sacred for the celebration of the creation around them.
If you do not praise Him, even the rocks will cry out. Creation cannot keep still.
The fog's quiet cleared. Pink became brighter and took on a hint of orange. Hills flattened out into plains, the clouds cleared, save for two, and the sky seemed to clear of all color. There were only two puffy clouds off in the distance that were suddenly accented by glowing sunlight around the edges as they reflected the not-yet-risen sun behind them.
It killed me a little bit that I was too groggy to catch all of this on camera, but no camera would've done it justice and I don't have the skill yet to catch the colors and depth anyway. Especially from a moving car.
At last the road curved west and the sun rose and flooded orange all over the plain to our left, just behind the sweet closed eyes of my sleeping baby in his car seat.
Good morning everybody. We're headed to California.
