Out Our Way: There's nothing here - Psalm 145

Out our way, Highway 2 is perhaps the longest two-lane highway in the nation. It parallels the Burlington Northern railway that covers most of the country along the Canadian Border. Back in the day, the trains were steam engines and needed water tanks to refill the boilers every 10 miles or so … and these towns sprang up along the tracks. Most were ranching and farming communities, so they tended to be small and rather obscure towns.  

With the creation of the National Park system, many tourists started to take the train and later the highway to places like Glacier, and most of the scenery tended to be — well, to be honest, boring. To this day, driving along Highway 2 seems pretty dull, so much so that we Hi-Line folks even made up a poster for the area and placed it on grain elevators that read “There’s Nothing Here.” But that’s the joke. 

For anyone who lives here and has actually taken the time to look around knows better. The Bear Paws are spectacular; the last of the open range up by Beaver Creek is unique, the largest military fort in west of the Mississippi, Fort Assinniboine, home of the famous 10th Cavalry under Black Jack Pershing, is here. This is where the last stand of Chief Joseph and the Nez Perce took place and is preserved.

And then there is just the vastness of the Big Open. To ride up a ridge and stare 100 miles in all directions at mostly open prairie, hear a hundred meadowlarks, smell the sage, and watch a thunderstorm in Canada 60 miles distant flashing lightning over darkened fields while you sit quietly in the sunshine watching … well, how do you explain that to the tourist who never looks past the highway road signs? 

There have always been folks whose narrow vision has kept them blind to what lies all around them, who cannot see past the borrow ditch on either side of the roadway of life, and travel this life saying, “There’s nothing here.”

Sadly, that seems to be the reality for most of us these days, especially in these times of ever shrinking faith and hope.

Frederich Nietzche, the German philosopher who helped inspire Hitler and other tyrants with his famous declaration, “God is dead,” laid important groundwork for modern atheism and other humanist movements. Affirming the idea “there is nothing here” and encouraging the idea of there only being emptiness, they seek to fill the man-made void by replacing faith, civilization, morality, and God with the latest fads in pop culture ( i.e. political correctness), the omnipotent and omniscient party/state, and, above all, the eventual adoration and worship of “The Leader.” We have seen it enough in the last century, we are seeing it now, and if we go back into history we will see it time and again. 

There are many who have believed “there is nothing here” and so fall into the same trap century after century. But at the same time, there have always been those free rovers who get off the barrow limitations of the immediate and look beyond. Read the Gospels, but also the Epistles, the Prophets and the Psalms. These were the seers who got off the flat road ways and took the trails into the hills and beyond.   

They rode up the “Tiger Ridge” and watched the thunderstorms in Canada, seeing the lightning bolts 60 miles away and feeling the awe of nature. These are the ones who found the fields of wildflowers hidden in the thickets in the ridges above the alfalfa. These are those souls who have heard the elk bugle and watched 100 antelope race across the buffalo grass with a grace that puts the Bolshoi Ballet to shame. These are the ones who have felt the chinook wind caress their frozen faces during the freezing days of calving season and feel the Hand of God .

It is so easy to get caught in the mundane monotony of a “Highway 2” in life and think, “There is nothing here,” But is that true? So many who decided to turn off the common road and take the less-ridden trail over the ridge discovered it was not. Maybe it’s time to follow and see for ourselves.  

——

The Rev. John Bruington is the retired pastor of First Presbyterian Church of Havre. He now lives in Colorado, but continues to write “Out Our Way.” He can be reached for comment or dialogue at [email protected].