OK, I have to backtrack a bit. Reflecting on my last post, I realized what I said about our bodies being suited to a geographic area, might be construed as having a Trumpian bent. I could see Trump use this geographic excuse to keep Mexicans in Mexico, and Muslims in the Middle East. Just to be clear—that is NOT what I meant. I could never agree with Trump’s racist views and hate rhetoric. And I don’t think that God has a grand plan for us that calls for us to live in a particular geographic area.

I wanted to express that my relationship to the environment is much more complicated than I’ll ever be able to understand. As Christians, we have cultivated a mindset that we are separate from the environment. Maybe this stems from the first creation account in Genesis where we are told to have domination over the earth. Yet the second Genesis creation story mentions no such thing. Plus, why would dominion mean control, as we’ve interpreted it, rather than care?

For a class I read an article by Jonathan Balcome called fish have feeling too (http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/15/opinion/fishes-have-feelings-too.html?_r=0). In this article, Balcome, a scientist that studies fish, discusses the goby fish that can swim over a rocky tide pool at high tide and memorize, in one try, the layout of the rocks for up to 40 days. The goby fish has clearly developed a relationship with those rocks that protects it from predators.

As we drive through buffalo country I am reminded of how this prairie land and the buffalo lived in a symbiotic relationship. Or closer to home, my backyard chickens that eat my compost, which turn into eggs and chicken poop. The latter fertilizes my garden and the vegetables and fruit that we eat. It is a complex symbiotic relationship. Why do I not live a symbiotic relationship with God’s creation? How could I live this way? How do I adapt on a cellular level according to the environment in which I live? When I lived in Berkeley, it took me about four years to figure out the seasons, subtle as they were, there was a pattern to the weather and my body adjusted. How could we as a Christian people explore our relationship with God’s creation and promote creation care based on a symbiotic relationship rather than control?

It’s construction season. Every highway has heavy equipment that eats up roads and spits them out into dump trucks that haul millions of concrete bits to who knows where. Ernesto comments, “Those are machines that only Jules Verne could have dreamed up.” He recounts how he recently stopped by a construction site in Minneapolis to discover how foundation beams interlock to form a wall. Ernesto’s curiosity quotient is bigger than the state of Montana. Just one of the reasons I love him.

We’re driving north on highway 13 towards Wolf Point, Montana. For miles the telephone poles are snapped off like toothpicks and the lines fly in the wind or writhe on the ground. The gas store clerk in Circle told me that a big storm came through last night. Must have been some winds that chopped off the poles like a knife going through butter. I am reminded that we can’t always control and tame nature—wind is wind; God is God.

We have seen only open ranch land and farmland, with the exception of the Badland of Theodore Roosevelt National Park, since we left Bismarck, North Dakota. Lots of imagining in the car about what it would be like to live in nowhere land with houses 20 miles or more apart. I feel lonely when I imagine it. I think it is the lack of trees that bothers me. Trees are my friends. Elena would like to have five lives so she can experience living in a number of places. Benjamin wants to ride his bike through it but expressed no desire to live here.

I stocked up on paper maps before getting on the road. I love paper maps. My phone is convenient for getting me around town, but I’m always a little frustrated that I can’t see where I am going in that tiny little screen. I like to spread out a map and pinpoint my destination and look for routes based not on efficiency but on interest.

Interesting things today:

• Clouds so low we could touch them (Benjamin)
• Baby cows that are so cute (Elena)
• Crazy road construction equipment and open landscape (Ernesto)
• Wild land formations (Badlands of Theodore Roosevelt National Park) and buffalo pies—evidence they are still on the plains (Julie)
• That cute dog I wanted to play with at the rest stop (Dreamer)
• The intense rain storm we drove through with bright blue skies in the north and menacing storms to the south (everyone)

And God saw that it was good! (Genesis 1)