Kansas

Salina, Kansas

Today I left late from Gary and Amy’s ranch – by the time we’d fed the horses in the crisp, bright morning, and I’d dropped Amy off in Colorado Springs it was already 1pm.

I ploughed on eastwards – and was rapidly immersed in the flattest, most featureless landscape I have ever seen. Welcome to Kansas.

To pass the time I listened to a CD I’d got from the library – a couple of lectures by Eckhart Tolle, author of ‘The Power of Now’. The lectures were called ‘Entering the Now’. Appropriately, given the nothingness of the landscape, the philosophical lesson on the CD was all about embracing the nothingness, and how to find serenity and peace in the absence of busy-ness and goal-driven thought.

I’m listening to these recordings in the hope that they will help me cope with the tedium of spending day after day on a tiny rowboat on the Pacific Ocean. I found this a constant challenge on the Atlantic – sometimes the lack of mental stimulation nearly drove me crazy.

I now think I’ve found the land-based equivalent of the Atlantic… and it’s name is Kansas.

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