Road Trip for the Soul

We left our home at 6:30am. The kids had spent the night in the motor home the night before, while we frantically “cleaned” our house. It is not clean, but it’s liveable for Rebekah, who will be watching our dog, Macie, for the next two months.

We made it to Detroit before the kids got hungry.

Last summer, wildfires ravaged multiple valleys in Oregon, including near Detroit, where we stopped to eat our cold cereal breakfast and surprise donuts from the Osieczaneks. Piper and I wandered around near The Lodge at Detroit Lake. 

We found places that hadn’t been cleaned up, the charred remains of a car and mobile home were still waiting for a bulldozer. 

A strand of Christmas lights was melted into the bark of a huge cedar. Other chunks of the tree’s bark had fallen away to reveal its orange underbelly, scarred but still very much alive.

I remembered back to last July. The wildfires started last Labor Day weekend (Sept 7) after an unusually dry summer, high winds and downed powerlines.  In a blink, three fires raged out of control. Soon, our skies were blackened and we were told to stay inside because the air outside was as dangerous as a pack of cigarettes. Being 2 months pregnant, I was cautious, venturing out only to drive places or water my plants on occasion. The smoke trapped us, stopped our playtime outside that was so precious during COVID-19 quarantine times. Others were trapped in much more dire circumstances, with 11 people dying in the fires. One family found safety in a river, but their baby died from burns and smoke. It also ate up the log cabin that Pastor Don and Carol were just about to buy in Vida.

A year later, the crews are still hauling burnt logs off hillsides carpeted with new purple vetch and families are rebuilding homes.

Foot-tall ferns are reestablishing and one huge poppy is growing next to a mural of a bike with melted tires and a seat cracked from heat.

On the hillside, bright, new 2x4s spring from the burned ground – framing a new home. The post office is still standing, but you can see that the fire charred the planter around the handicapped sign out front.

Huge lengths of charred trees lay in a parking lot, awaiting their next life. One such section is stripped of its black bark and cut into a bench that will become beautiful again with careful carpentry.

There is something redemptive going on in this place.

“Do you see the beautiful things?” I asked my daughter.  

“I think we should go back,” she answered. “Are we supposed to be here?”

“This is why we are doing this trip. To see things like this. We don’t have to always hurry.”

I took my time, finding the little resilient things I want to remember.

She is one of those things.

This daughter of mine has been burned.

She has been thrown into a crucible no 7-year-old should have to experience.

There was no one more excited to have a little sister than her.

She was so proud, so ready to baby that girl for the rest of her life. And that she did.

Even in the times when Hallelujah wasn’t breathing well – times we called “purple breathing,” Piper never shied from snuggling her close. She reveled in any chance she got to get her hands on that baby. She so badly wanted her baby to live.

But her baby did not live long, and we’ve slowly been picking up the pieces of the life we once thought we would live with her.

I’m often reminded of Hallelujah on this trip. We started planning this trip about a year and a half ago, before COVID and before pregnancy no. 7. When I got pregnant, we started envisioning how the trip would be different with a 3 month old in tow. We started looking for motor homes with a space for a baby bed next to the master bed. Then, after Oct. 21, 2020, we started wondering if this trip would even happen – if a severely disabled child could make a trip of this magnitude, or if she would even be out of the NICU by then. We held the trip in open hands, waiting to see what would happen with little Hallelujah. And so here we are, two days into a road trip for the soul.

We spent last night in Glenn’s Ferry, Idaho. In the evening, Piper, Judah and I went out looking for adventure, while Bryan and Cayden stayed back at our campsite to play cards.

We found a path going in the direction of the nearby Snake River, so I was hopeful it would lead us to it. My reluctant partners in crime came along, Judah riding his scooter on the dirt road and Piper tossing her doll, Laura into the air. Coming through the meadow, we spotted deer, quail and lots of birds and found a hidden pond with catfish jumping out of the water. 

The kids sat and watched the fish jumping and I marveled at how many bobbers were stuck in the trees hanging over the pond.

My two youngest have a interesting psychological bond with this doll, Laura.

They talk to Laura, help her “walk,” talk (in the most irritating baby voice) for her and Piper takes this doll everywhere with her. She bought a REAL stroller for this doll off FB Marketplace. There is no denying Piper and Judah are both channeling some of their sibling instincts onto this doll. It’s impossible to ignore, and reminds me constantly that there is a hole in our family.

While there will always be a hole, we say her name regularly – not out of grief, but out of praise. I’m constantly taken by surprise when her name shows up in a song at church or on the radio. We drove through the hills of Idaho today, the whole family belting out the Hallelujah playlist on our Spotify. Piper has her Hallelujah photos taped up all around her bunk bed in the motor home. She falls asleep looking at the photo of her sister wearing the flowered preemie dress she chose for her.

The kids got to play in the Great Salt Lake today.

I watched the seagulls.

There were so many of them, hundreds, floating in the strong winds, moving in waves of wings across the sky.

I watched my daughters.

They are happy. 

They are adventuring into the mucky waters among the reeds to get to the little island of river rocks. I joined them. Piper is near revolt because she’s forgotten her sandals, so I let her on my back. She clings to me so tightly, I don’t need to hold her up. Cayden barely blinks at the green slime on her sandals. 

We walk back through the water, which we discover to be much easier than our previous route. They find special sparkly rocks hewn from this salty lake.

“Can we take them home to put in sister’s garden?”

Of course.

She isn’t here, but she is everywhere.

For the sake of recording our trip, I also want to note that in day 2 of our trip, we went to the Three Islands Crossing Oregon Trail Museum in Glenn Ferry, ID. 

The kids will probably remember the push pops, but I will remember the information about the promises broken between the U.S. government and the Native Americans who lived in Idaho. The Native children were shipped out to boarding schools in Pennsylvania, Natives were promised land, but settlers and miners kept coming and settling on it. 

Also, I was amazed at the 40,000 children who came to the West on the Oregon Trail. The museum said that it was an “adventure” for them, but I imagine the heartache as well, considering 10% of the people who travelled the trail did not live to see Oregon. My Great Great Great Grandfather was a teenager when he traversed the Oregon Trail with his parents and siblings. 

The "adventure" our kids experience now is partly in thanks to the sacrifice of those who went before us, pioneering into a better life. 

Leaving Glenns Ferry, we also encountered our first hiccup, discovering a leak in the plumbing under the counter by the sink. Luckily we discovered it relatively quickly and Bryan was able to tighten it with his hands, so it only set us back 1 hour. Then we were off to the Great Salt Lake.