A little closer

I grew up watching people drive up to the wayside rest overlooking Ordway Prairie. Sometimes I would imagined who they might be and why they stopped. Who are you?

Think of it as part of a weekend road trip and this spot looks like a great place to stop and stretch your legs. While you're at it, why not get in some history at the same time? You park your car and with a dip-your-toe-in level of commitment, you open your car door and step out. You might notice the strength of the wind. You might even venture a couple paces to read the sign that tells a history of this place. You take in the view, much like one does in a museum looking at a painting of a faraway fantasy landscape from the mid 1800s. In the same way, there is an imaginary yet ingrained built-in boundary that tells you to look, but don't touch. So in a few moments, almost automatically, you get back in your car and drive.

You always wish you could've stayed longer.

What lured you to stop there in the first place? I like to imagine that somewhere inside those few moments you were not in a museum, you were standing on the shores of an ocean, feeling as if you were on the precipice of something more than just a boundary between civilization and nature.

This weekend we begin rehearsing in earnest to bring you to My Ocean. We welcome the Twin Cities Sacred Harp Singers to Ordway Prairie and invite you to join us in an open-sing session at Hope Lutheran Church in Sunburg, Mn.