The Refuge

The battered old taxi rattled down a wide country road, raising a billowing cloud of dust that obliterated everything in its wake. The ancient car’s inadequate air conditioning system added to the racket but provided very little respite against the heat. As they barreled down that pitiful excuse for a roadway, a large sign came into view.
“Stop! Stop right here!”
Startled, the driver hit the brake with unexpected force, hurling his passenger forward against the seat that separated them. He gazed at wide emerald eyes in his rearview mirror, seeing an angry hauteur that he had seldom encountered in one so young.
“W-what’s wrong?” he asked timidly.
“I want out right here,” she stated with certainty as she reached for the oversized suitcase that lay in the seat beside her.
“You’re gettin’ out here?” he asked incredulously. “But, ma’am…”
“How much do I owe you?” she asked, interrupting his protests and flinging long auburn hair away from her striking face.
“Uh, well, it’s a good long way from the bus depot clear out here…”
“How much?” she asked again, her impatience quickly changing into extreme annoyance.
“Uh, that’ll be $12.50,” he answered, a note of apology in his voice.
She tossed a twenty dollar bill onto the front seat with careless negligence and wrenched open the door on her right. It shrieked with resistance as she pushed it wide. She began to drag her heavily packed bag across the seat, then noticed that the driver was busily counting out her change and shook her head with disgust.
“Use that money to get some oil for this door,” she shouted as she slammed it shut and waved him on.
Finally fed up with her rudeness, he stomped on the accelerator and took off with a roar, leaving “her highness” coughing and spluttering in the suffocating blanket of dust his spinning tires spewed forth. Fuming with rage, the young woman squeezed her eyes tightly shut and tried not to breathe until some of the horrid dirt began to settle.
When she finally dared open an eye, she saw a dingy gray world come slowly into focus. Lush vegetation filled the ditches, but it appeared to be a sick yellowish color. Leaves, completely covered with the fine dust that seemed to hang forever in the air, drooped listlessly. And the heat! She felt as if she had stepped into the very jaws of hell.
She looked down at her expensive clothing with dismay. She had worn long sleeves this late August morning against the chill of autumn that already permeated the beautiful valley in Montana where she had been born seventeen years ago. The deep green of her western style silk shirt now nearly matched her tan slacks, and her favorite boots struggled to peak through the sand on the road. She furiously brushed the grimy dirt from her clothes as she surveyed this totally foreign place that was called Oklahoma.
Where in the world were the trees? What few she saw, dotting the flat countryside, were of some unknown variety and looked very different from the lofty pines and firs and tamaracks that covered the mountainsides near her home. The area seemed utterly remote. She half expected to see a band of renegade Indians appear suddenly on the horizon to come tearing across the prairie towards her.
She sighed and wiped the perspiration from her forehead, which was already turning red from the blistering sun. She had never felt such scorching heat in all of her life! She thought wistfully of the new snow that she had noticed only this morning on the mountain tops above Missoula, as her plane had lifted into the big, astonishingly blue sky that Montana is famous for.
She gazed at the large sign on her right that announced her arrival at this obscure destination.
WELCOME
TO
THE REFUGE
In You, O Lord, I have taken refuge;
let me never be put to shame… (Psalm 31:1)
The young woman wrinkled her brow with distaste. She realized that she was going to have to put up with a lot of religious nonsense in this place. But that had to be better than confronting her father—or that witch, Caroline!
She reached for her heavy bag that was now coated with the ever-present grittiness of this place. The copse of large trees that surrounded her new home seemed much further away now that she stood alone on this gravel inferno. The retreating cab was but a dirty smudge on the horizon.
She thought fleetingly of another taxi in a faraway city, and the ride that had somehow changed her destiny. That had brought her with unmistakable verity to this unknown place. As she began to walk wearily toward the beckoning spot of green in front of her, she thought with remorse of the beautiful wooded valley that she had left behind.