Mass migration of soldiers....

As I drive west on I40 through gorgeous New Mexico, I'm filled with such love and emotion inspired from the reds and browns and greens of the mountains, the blacks of the cloud shadows and the ancient lava weaving across the land, the buzzards and ravens and kestrels joyfully soaring on wild winds. I settle in content to listen to my book, absorb the magnificent landscape, and wave happily to the enthusiastic drivers who pass me, honking or hanging out passenger windows or just smiling and motioning thumbs up.

I see 4 or 5 large buses pulled off to the shoulder so I move over to the fast lane to give them space, as I always do. To my horror, I witness hundreds of identical soldiers pouring out of the buses onto the land beyond the shoulder. There are so many of them, they turn the red rocks a putrid green.

I'm sick. Where are they being taken to? How many of the people that I passed or even spoke with in the tiny towns across the country have turned their sons over to kill for the fascists that are blatantly running our country? What do these young men know about compassion and walking a mile in someone else's shoes? When, if not already, will they turn over their final speck of morality and become the killing machines for our empire?

I lean on my horn the way angry truckers do to me and give them the thumbs down. Some of them are facing me, others are milling around like the cows awaiting their cross-country railroad trip alongside the Texas freeway.

My heart clenches, wondering if they even know how to spell Korea or Somalia or wherever they are on their way to.

Several miles later, I pull into a beautiful Arizona rest stop and see that several large buses are idling there with the trucks. And dozens of soldiers are congregated around the doors. I lean out and try to yell "RESIST" "RESIST", that I think comes out as a squeak in this vast land. But all the soldiers turn in unison toward my truck and they all edge forward, their initial smiles turning into gaping stares as I repeat "RESIST" "RESIST".

I drive around to the car side, park quickly, hop out and see a few straggling soldiers leaving the bathrooms, climbing over the rocks and rugged terrain of the rest stop, heading toward the buses. I rush after them but can't catch up. I want to ask them, not yell at them, who they are getting ready to kill? Whose mother or son or brother will they decide to murder? But the all disappear as quickly as a retreating tide, leaving no footprint.

I feel like falling on my knees and weeping, knowing so much more clearly what their future has in store then they do. And our future, my future, the Mother Earth, and the future of all the unarmed and barely armed humans on this earth who will bravely try to fight for justice, for freedom, for peace.