Thursday, June 7, 2007

Perspective

So it's been a month. What? I've been busy. Really. I have proof. Wanna see? Maybe some other time.

So I was leaving one of my jobs the other night and as I turned North on the back road towards the highway that leads me home, I saw a thousand blinking red lights off in the distance. Okay, maybe there weren't a thousand. But quite a few. And they didn't belong there. There were too many of them and they were too close together to be radio towers, and in the daylight, you couldn't see anything.

It was a mystery, one that I was more than willing to investigate.

A day or so later I finished work early. Well, not early, just late enough to not start anything new. So I picked up and packed out, stopped at the gas station on my way out of town for my End of Day Reward and a couple of Stuart's O&C and then instead of getting on the freeway, I continued North.

About two miles North of town, the mystery was solved. How disappointing, I didn't even have to get out my truck. I could see exactly what the source of all that crazy red blinking was. They stood off in the hazy distance, a literal gargantuan forest. Windmills.

Now most people would would have gone: "Ooooh. That explains it." And turned off at the first road and headed for home. But I have this natural curiosity: I have to know "How" and "Why." It's not intellectual belligerence. It's something that I was given at birth, and when I was a child, it was encouraged. So I kept on. I had to see them up close. But the farther that I went, it was like I was standing still, because it didn't seem like I was gaining any ground. They weren't getting any closer.

Eventually I began to mark a difference: they were getting bigger. No, that wasn't a small grain container. It was a hundred footer. And no, those weren't kids toys, that was a real homestead.

They were massive.

As I entered the "forest" I slowed my van from the 65 that I had been doing and began leaning over the steering wheel, rubber necking like a tourist. I pulled up under neath one and got out and was simply awed by their stature. The had to be at least three hundred feet tall. The blades at least one hundred. And they "shooooom, shooooom, shoooomed" over head. They had this little house on the back of them and I thought how completely awesome it would be to climb up to it, and see the world from there.

I looked around and saw a service truck over at another windmill and that the service door was open. So, I climbed back into my van drove over there, thinking that I might be able to talk with the technician. When I arrived, I saw a rope dangling from the "light house" and tethered to the transformer box, but no one any where. I walked tentatively up the aluminum steps and poked my head into the hatch. It was about twelve feet across and there was an aluminum ladder that ran up, in stages, to platforms, all the way up, or at least as high as I could see.

I could hear noises transferring down the metal rigging, so I new that, whoever, was up at the top working. It took everything in my NOT to just start up (I love to climb). But I knew that if i did, that that would end badly. "Uh, yeah, Jonny Law? I gots a crazy whats needs be incarcerated."

I wonder if God is like that. He is so Big and so Great that even as we are on the right path and we are heading towards Him, it doesn't seem as if we are getting any closer, until BAM! we're overwhelmed by His all encompassing vastness.

So, If a man ever gets to where he is thinking he is something, and that he is big stuff, he needs to come out here,
And realise that he is nothing. That is my full sized, 3/4 ton work van at the base of the monster, not a minivan.

Here, I'm half the distance I was in the first shot. See what I mean. Closer. But not.

9 comments:

Rebecca said...

cool. very cool. I can't believe you didn't climb up. I kept expecting you to say "so, I started climbing..." :-)

Incomplete said...

right. I was bummed.

Erica said...

Wow...

Anonymous said...

Those things are HUGE!! But I don't see the lights, where are the lights Tyson???
~Deb

Katie said...

Cool!!!

Those are definitely huge!

Miss Alice said...

Not to miss the windmills and strain at gnats, but.......what are Stuart's O&C?

Incomplete said...

Only the best treat, after Breyer's Vanilla Bean Ice Cream, ever to be invented. Nothing like coming home after a long hard days work, getting cleaned up, eatin' your din-din, and after the kids are in bed, and you're chillin' on the couch, you take a Stuart's Orange and Cream Soda, and your day is complete.

Anonymous said...

Was this near to your home? I know there are several of these out along I-39. I didn't realize how big they are, but your pictures look just like those. Getting your van in the picture really does give you some perspective.

Katie said...

Ah yes, Breyers Vanilla Bean ice cream.. That must be an A____ thing...