When I was in elementary school, we learned about the Oregon Trail. We learned about how oodles and oodles of people loaded up everything that they could into covered wagons, sold everything else, and completely uprooted themselves and traveled west in the face of great opposition in order to create a better life for themselves and their children. On occasion, some couldn't take the challenge, and they had to go back East.
When I was in community college, we learned about how eastern nations like Japan looked at Western culture and tried to emulate their artwork, traveled there for education, and saw the lifestyles of the Europeans as more "advanced."
Perhaps this is why, when I tried to leave Iowa City on Friday to go visit Omaha, that I got on I-80 East instead of I-80 West.
Iowa City is my own personal "West." It's a "Wild West" that isn't tamed, but is submerged in a culture that draws a very definite line in the sand. Those who straddle that line are pulled quickly to the side of the world. There is opposition here, though granted much of it is the same opposition that comes from entering adulthood no matter where you are living. But I came here in search of a better life, I came here for culture and education. And had it occurred that I couldn't take it, I would have had to have returned to Omaha, where I came from. Omaha is my "East."
So according to every history class I've taken, Iowa City is "West" and Omaha is "East." This is the only explanation that I have to offer for why I got on I-80 East in order to go West.
But I don't live in the past, and at the present I'm looking to the future. I don't really know which end of that maddening three and a half hour trip is "home." I don't know where my future husband is, I don't know how much longer school will take me, I don't even know where I'm going to live come the end of August.
At the present, we have airplanes. We know that the earth is round. Our interstates run both east AND west. I still feel pretty uprooted at this point, but I trust God to plant me where He wants me when the time is right.
