At the novel's midpoint, Dayna reaches a moment of self-discovery and transcendence.
lyrics
Earlier that day, while passing underneath a prairie cottonwood, Dayna had spied a flash of crimson fluttering down from above; reaching up, she'd surprised herself by actually catching the leaf in mid-fall. Studying her prize, she'd then fallen into a reverie, and had pondered, at length, the symmetry of nature:
The leaf's intricate network of veins mirrored, in miniature, the branches from which it had dropped -- not to mention the other, unseen tributaries anchoring the trunk to the earth below. The realization had made her gasp, and it had moved her in a way she couldn't quite fathom. The veins were the branches were the roots; from high in the air to deep underground, the tree emphatically asserted its "treeness" throughout.
They can have their Bible, she had though, 'cause here's the divine plan.
And now, perched atop a looming land formation with a nasty north wind in her face, Dayna took this line of thought further. She'd seen it dozens of times in dozens of ways: the land sustained not just flora, but fauna as well. And in so doing, it embraced male and female in equal measure, engaging and enriching both sexes with an unerring -- and unerringly even-handed -- devotion. And what, finally, was "God" if not the seed-sowing, life-growing spirit flowing through that land: through bison and bighorn, pine tree and prairie grass, mountain and canyon and...and Dayna herself?
My own nature, she understood with a start, mirrors nature.
Throughout her adult life -- and even before, in her teens -- there had been those who'd told her how "wrong" her feelings were, from the ex-boyfriend who'd labeled her attraction to women "a phase," to the leader of a women's support group who'd provided anything but, accusing Dayna of "coming halfway out" and deriding her professed feelings for men as a cover. At times, under the weight of such criticism, Dayna had found herself wondering whether her detractors on one side or the other might be right. Yet the land itself seemed to suggest otherwise -- and to do so by example.
Looking out, she saw the vista before her as if for the first time. She'd just begun, tentatively, to believe in a higher power, yet already she grasped what it meant for her -- her, who loved female and male, women and men -- for her to have been made in that higher power's image.
Any lingering trace of guilt connected to who she was and whom she had loved vanished...the moment Dayna understood that her Creator felt the very same way.
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