Yesterday morning I hopped into my truck to head to town for supplies. It was a warm but windy day here in rural Kansas, the southerly winds were picking up dust and dirt off the dry ground but it was sunny and pleasant nonetheless, with not a cloud in the sky.
I drove towards the end of our driveway and before I got to our mailbox to stop I could not believe my eyes! I grabbed my phone, got out of the truck, pinched my both of my arms and walked up and down a bit making sure I was not currently in a dream state or alternate reality experience before taking this amazing photo:
Well. It was, it is, amazing to me but, probably this image is kind of boring to you the reader. I mean, what are we even looking at?
Some old barbed wire pasture fence, a utility pole that has been laying there for years, and a few scrubby trees, with some wide open pasture behind them. Nothing much there right? Basically a photo of nothing.
Well that is the whole point and standing next to my truck with this realization of an empty pasture in front of me I squealed like a kid on Christmas and did a little happy dance. Oh who am I kidding? I did a rather big happy crazy dance! No one drove by to see it but I would not have cared a bit.
You see, what used to be visible, just a short distance to the left of that middle tree in the photo above, was a great big noisy, gassy one of these:
Sigh.
Living in the country is wonderful, don’t get me wrong, but there are always trade offs and realities to deal with that are not quite the picturesque or idyllic scenarios one imagines before actually getting here. One of the trade offs for us out here in rural Kansas has been living in the midst of some of these oil fields that have pump jacks running.
Our farm had one fairly close one installed in the field east of us when we bought the property more than a decade ago. It was not running at the time. We knew the possibility was that it could start up at any time, but it didn’t actually run for more than a year after we moved in, but one day, it just started up and has been running ever since.
Imagine me with an unhappy face when that happened. I mean I knew it could happen, but darn.
The good news was that it was east of us, and with the prevailing southerly or westerly winds, we rarely were bothered much by its noise or gassy smells.
But then, over the next 9 or 10 years more pump jacks were put in. One to the south of the first one. Two more across our main road directly north of those. All still east of us, and all behind our hedgerow trees, but still I felt them, saw them, sometimes smelled them but mostly I heard them. Not all the time and not on windy days to be sure, but on the most peaceful and beautifully still and quiet evenings you could definitely hear the pumping and machinery working and sometimes squealing, when all I really wanted to hear were the owls or the crickets or the whippoorwills or the horses neighing in their pasture.
“Acceptance” I would tell myself with a sigh. “Gratitude” for the 98% wonderful farm life experience I have always dreamed of living.
Then, 18 months ago they put in yet another pumpjack. This one was different. Much different and where it was located made the differences even worse.
The jack was directly north of our farm and it was not run by an electric motor like the others nearby, but was run on a combustion engine, powered with a propane, a much different and much more disturbingly noisy set up than the pumps to the East. Any north wind at all, would blow the noise to the farm. Worse, the machine chugging noise was incredibly distracting, its waxing and waning pattern and its frequent laboring could be felt in my teeth and in my bones. Especially when that engine was running roughly. Which was often. Way too often.
Interestingly to me, no one else in the house was bothered much. Visitors never commented upon the jacks. I heard comments like, “I barely hear that thing.” Or “Yeah, sometimes I can hear it if it is really quiet, or the engine is struggling.” My hearing and energy senses have always been extremely sensitive. That it didn’t bother anyone else didn’t help my desire for internal peace and quiet over the incessant engine noise.
When it first started up and assaulting my energy I actually floated the idea of moving! Where can we go to freaking get away from this? I have lived in other parts of oil country in more than just Kansas. Oklahoma, New Mexico, Texas even Pennsylvania have fields. And when a pumpjack goes in, there it stays. Even the ancient ones long since abandoned often are left as relics or monuments to past oil booms, rusting away in place. (So you can move but unless you live in the middle of 100 acres with electric and water, good luck ticking off all your perfect property boxes and having them remain the same.)
Every trip down that drive before turning on the main road for the last year and a half I would have that pumpjack right in my center vision. I had many opportunities to ponder this massive personal trigger in my world. And oh the irony. I typically was doing all of this pondering while behind the wheel of my big old diesel farm truck. Believe me I fully appreciated this cosmic joke and often gave myself lectures on perspective. “Come on now, is it really so bad?”
But, I started to view this, as I attempt to do with most things that I do not prefer, as an opportunity. An opportunity to manifest. So I started and was reminded to refresh my manifestation program with every trip down my drive.
Last summer the jack went quiet for a long long while. Every time I saw it standing still at the end of the driveway I said a thank you prayer. I also said a prayer for those who were working on having it run. I wanted their abundance to flow too, no matter what was going on with that jack. I was certain their immediate goals were diametrically opposed to mine. But maybe we could all be happy?
Maybe they could run electric lines to that motor? Take out the propane? Or maybe, that well would simply run dry someday and not be worth the trouble and it would stop. Maybe we all would get our free energy boxes delivered in 2021 and none of the pumps would have to run at all. Ever again. Yeah, I like that idea. I like that one the best!
The last few days as I have been preparing for our family Thanksgiving and arrival of grandchildren and the holidays beyond I have held in my mind and in my heart and in every cell of my body a strong energetic sense of celebration. For my returning family, for health, for dad being here and not in a care home, for abundance to be sure, but also for a bigger kind of celebration. In these still very turbulent and uneasy and unsettled times I hold most deeply in my heart the idea that all of humanity will celebrate in 2021 and/or beyond in a kind of powerful unison. Celebrate things that we may not even know are coming.
I can feel it building up. Can you?
I think that celebratory energy helped manifest my own little miracle of that pump jack completely disappearing. I mean that just doesn’t happen around here! Pump jacks rarely if ever are disassembled and taken away. Even the propane tank is gone. Maybe they are simply replacing it with something else, another system. I really don’t know for sure, we shall see, but maybe, just maybe, they capped the well and the black angus cattle will be put back in that field instead.
I’m going to start manifesting that, right now.
