Subject: Re: Presence/Mindfulness
I lived in western Nebraska for a few years. The Sandhills were one of my favorite places in Nebraska. The Ogallala aquifer is at the surface in the depressions in the dunes and it creates many small lakes and ponds amid the sandhills. A very interesting environment.

Very interesting indeed! Before I travelled through them, the term "sandhills" had me believing "dry" and "dusty", but as you say, that is not the case.

Cherry County is the largest county in the United States- it's huge and took me two days to get across it.

OK.... now you've got me in a state of reverie, and it's the furthest thing from "mindfulness", but still.... memories flood in.

About the day (the day after the events in my previous post)... as I was riding from Valentine west to the town of Merriman.

Still in the sandhills..... my back tire went flat.

So there I was, starting a routine that I seemed to be repeating every few hundred miles. I released my rear wheel, laid my bike on its side, pulled out my repair kit and sat by the side of the road, miles from nowhere, pried off my tire from the rim and began to repair my inner tube.

Five minutes went by.... not another vehicle on the road it seemed. The only sound was the wind blowing through the grasses.

And then I heard it.... the sound of a vehicle approaching- coming from the direction I had come, and headed west. My back was facing in the direction of the vehicle, so I didn't see it, but I heard the engine slowing, and after a bit, I heard the crunch of gravel as it moved onto the shoulder and came to a stop about fifty yards behind me.

The door opened.... I turned around.... and there, getting out of the Chevy Blazer, was a guy dressed completely in black.... black Stetson, black Levis, black Tony Lama boots, sunglasses and a black shirt.. with a white clerical collar. A priest.

"Episcopalian." I asked?

"Hell no, boy," Roman Catholic.

And that is how I met Father John.

Could he help, he asked?

"No thanks," I said, for in truth, I was just then getting ready to put the repaired wheel back on my bike. But I asked him how far it was to the next town, a little berg named Cody, because it was getting close to lunchtime and I was thinking mightily about food.

He guessed my intention, because then he mentioned a cafe in the town and said he was headed that way because they had the best banana cream pie in the county, and I told him I'd meet him there for lunch.

He returned to the Chevy Blazer and drove off. I got on my bike and rode the five miles to Cody and found him sitting in the cafe.

We shared a wonderful lunch (with slices of banana cream pie). I told him I was a recent seminary grad on a two month bicycle trip- headed to the Tetons, then south and back east to Oklahoma for my first parish. And he told me about himself- a former commodities trader in Chicago (which is where I went to seminary).

A native American, he went off to Catholic seminary, entered the priesthood and now was the priest assigned to the entirety of Cherry County- a ministry field so vast that he kept blankets in the back of his Blazer in case he got stuck in a snowstorm going from church to church.

Looking at me rather intently, he said "You know.... it's still not too late in the year to get some really bad weather (it was the very end of April).

We talked for an hour or so, and it was finally time to leave. He had places to go, and I wanted to get back on the road. We walked outside. I unlocked my bike from the post. He got in his Blazer. His engine was running when I pulled up alongside him.

"How far is it to Merriman." I asked?

"24 miles... at mile marker 98. Watch those mile markers, white boy, or you're gonna die!"

Then he laughted and that was the last I saw of Father John.