The Dogs, the Ocean, and the Prison Next Door

(Or, This Saturday Morning)

There’s a field where Todd and I take the dogs. Wide, wild, and open. No matter the weather, watching them run free always gives me peace.

Kind of like the ocean.

Maybe because the three of them are so big and overwhelming, and when they tear through the grass—sometimes freshly cut, sometimes dangerously long—they move with the same force as the tide rushing to shore.

Different smells: hay, grass, moss, dog.

Different, but still good.

On the other side of the field, just beyond a dense line of trees, sits a maximum-security prison.

That contrast always gets me.

Here I am, breathing in freedom, while steps away people are shut away from this beauty. Maybe close enough to smell it, though I almost hope not.

It is brutiful—a word I learned from Glennon Doyle. Brutally beautiful. A reminder of how thin the line is between freedom and confinement, health and disease, life and death.

Some mornings, like this one, the weight of that juxtaposition is too heavy. When it is, I pull myself back to what is right in front of me: the dogs. Todd. The taste of iced coffee not yet watered down. An egg, pepper, onion, and hot sauce wrap.

Proof enough that, for this moment, I’m good.

And still, I can’t ignore that just beyond the trees are two truths at once: a prison that reflects our broken criminal system, and a beacon of alternative energy that reflects human hope.

Humans really are a conundrum.