Weekend Away: Play Time

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For the third year in a row, I spent a fall weekend in North Dakota. My friend Sam is from Finley, North Dakota- a town of 500 people. To get there you drive four hours west and then another hour and a half on smaller country roads. It is like nothing I have ever known. The landscape is flat with fields stretching as far as you can see, interrupted sporadically by grain elevators, hay bales, and the occasional house or tree.

On this trip we also got to hang out with Sam's friend Ariel. Sam and Ariel are friends from high school. Ariel lives in Oregon and had not been home to Finley in a long time. Sam and I picked Ariel up outside of town where she had been camping at her Mom's house.



 Ariel is very unique, a free spirit. She is very kind and has a childlike spirit. She regularly meditates and travels with a ukulele in a mandolin case. She offers compliments and may be the only person I've encountered who remembers to find pleasure in the little things. I can't recall all of the times she told Sam and I how beautiful we are, or how many moments she acknowledged a simple happiness- the sky, an apple, a bed, friendship. You have the feeling when you are around her that nothing passes by without recognition.

That kind of personality is contagious. Sam, Ariel, and I went around town like little kids. We played. We climbed, we ran, we made up games. I got over feeling ridiculous and let myself laugh and had so much fun.