It all started with wild raspberries. My cousin and I had decided to drive to Afton Apple early in the morning. We had this beautiful little plan: pick some wild raspberries, wander around the farm, take pictures in the sunflower fields, and make a few reels celebrating end of the summer. Since sunflowers were involved, naturally, we dressed for the occasion: long white dresses, makeup, hair done. We looked beautiful! Very beautiful, actually! The kind of beautiful that requires effort and therefore cannot simply be wasted by going back home.

Except when we arrived, Afton Apple was closed. And apparently, there were no raspberries waiting for us either. Now what? We could be very disappointed... We honestly could CHOOSE that and give up... but... we were already dressed... Already made up... Already two women floating around rural Minnesota in long white dresses like brides... between eight and nine in the morning. And the morning itself was absolutely gorgeous! The road along Neal Avenue was quiet, the fields were glowing, corn stretched on both sides of us, the air was still cool, there were clouds in the sky, and nobody was around. It felt as though we had the entire countryside to ourselves... 

So we did what any reasonable women in long white dresses with nowhere else to go would do: we started taking pictures and videos! At some point, we simply pulled over, walked barefoot into the grass and along the cornfields, and started making our reels right there by the road. It was perfect! quiet, empty, beautiful! 

Until about 11 a.m.

The clouds disappeared, the sun came out, and people apparently woke up and left their houses. And suddenly we discovered something important: this was NOT a quiet country road after all. This was a very busy country road! LOL A surprisingly fast country road. Cars started flying past us, and then something even stranger began happening. They started coming back...

The first one was a huge black pick-up truck. It drove past us, slowed down, and then turned around. Immediately, something inside me went on alert. My brain started working very quickly: Who is that? Why are they coming back? What do they want? What do I have in my purse? Is there anything in there I can use as a weapon? What exactly am I going to fight with? I was mentally inventorying the contents of my handbag and preparing for battle.

Then I looked at my cousin. She was panicking too. Wonderful! At least we were together in that! Except her panic had absolutely nothing to do with mine! LOL She was convinced we were about to be arrested. We can't stand here! We're not supposed to stop here! They're going to call the police! We're going to get in trouble! And in the middle of all this, I suddenly realized how fascinating it was. Same truck. Same two women. Same road. Same moment. Same physical sensation of panic... and two completely different stories. My nervous system had apparently decided: MEN. DANGER. FIND A WEAPON. Hers had decided: AUTHORITY. RULES. WE ARE GOING TO JAIL. Neither of us had the slightest idea what was actually happening!!! 

Then the truck pulled up. Inside were two very handsome men from Wisconsin with the kindest, most open faces. They rolled down the window, smiling, and immediately asked, “Ladies, are you okay? Is something wrong with your car? Do you need help?” And that was it! We melted! All the imaginary danger disappeared in about three seconds. There was something so genuinely kind and protective in the fact that they had driven past us, noticed two barefoot women in white dresses standing beside a road in the middle of nowhere, and thought, Something might be wrong. We should go back. They didn't know us. They were going somewhere. They had absolutely no obligation to stop. And yet they turned that enormous truck around just to make sure two strangers were safe.

And maybe because we were already standing there looking slightly ridiculous and very dressed up for a cornfield, the whole thing suddenly began to feel almost medieval to me. Like a king riding up to a queen and throwing himself at her feet: My lady! Are you in distress? May I be of service? I also caught those wonderfully appreciative looks men sometimes give women when they genuinely think they are beautiful. The older gentleman was looking at me with absolutely shining eyes, and finally he smiled and said something like, “Well, you ladies look like brides right now! Standing right here in the field. You look amazing! Perfect picture scene” Suddenly, our failed raspberry expedition felt like an excellent idea. 

We flirtatiously thanked them, laughed, and explained that nobody was stranded and nobody needed rescuing. We were simply two women in white dresses taking pictures in a cornfield because the place we originally planned to visit was closed. They drove away... and then another car slowed down. Then another one stopped. Then someone else turned around. People kept checking on us: “Are you ladies okay?” “Do you need help?” “Is something wrong with your car?”

At some point, we looked at each other and realized that we probably needed to get out of there. 😂 By then, every second car seemed prepared to launch a rescue operation for the mysterious barefoot women in white dresses. I think someone may have even called the police after all! A police car eventually came by, but thankfully they didn't stop. By that point, we were already talking to an older couple who had also stopped to check on us, so I imagine the officers looked over, saw two very much alive women chatting happily on the side of the road, and decided the situation was under control. They passed by with smiles on their faces... 

And the funny thing is that I keep thinking about that morning. My cousin and I are immigrants from Kazakhstan. I have lived in the United States for 26 years now. This is my home. I have built my life here. And still, moments like this catch me by surprise. Yes, Minnesota is breathtakingly beautiful. Wisconsin is too. I could drive through these fields and forests and lakes forever. But there is something else I love about living here: people notice.

A stranger sees something that might be wrong and, instead of assuming that someone else will deal with it, turns the car around. They stop. They ask, Are you okay? Do you need help? Maybe that person needs nothing. Maybe she is simply standing barefoot in a cornfield in a white dress taking pictures for Instagram. But you don't know that until you ask. And I think there is something incredibly beautiful about living among people who still ask.

There was another lesson in that morning for me, though. My cousin and I both grew up in Kazakhstan, and somewhere along the way, life taught both of us to anticipate danger before anything had actually happened... Now I consider this side of me as the life's wisdom vs. my status operandi. What fascinated me was how quickly our minds created two completely different versions of the same approaching truck. I was preparing myself for danger from the men inside it, she was preparing herself for trouble with the law. The truck had not even reached us yet, and both of us were already living inside an outcome that existed only in our minds.

And perhaps this is something we do far more often than we realize. We look at what is approaching and predict how the story will end based on everything that has happened to us before. Sometimes we are right. Sometimes the thing we fear really does happen. Sometimes the person behaves exactly as we expected, the door stays closed, the answer is no, and the old story repeats itself. There are no guarantees! No guarantees for the actual outcome. You can't negotiate it with actual life! YOU MUST BE IN IT to consciously participate in whatever outcome it is going to bring us in. 

But sometimes the truck turns around, the window rolls down, and instead of what we had prepared ourselves for, there are two smiling and cute faces asking, Ladies, are you okay? Can we help you, two feiries?

We cannot know which version of the story is waiting for us until we actually meet it. We can imagine. We can calculate probabilities. We can protect ourselves. We can rehearse every possible ending in our heads... and STILL be WRONG! our minds WILL lie to us... Oh, that sweet voice inside your head: "this is how it is"...  But imagination, even when it is built from years of experience, is still not the same thing as reality. At some point, if we want to know what is actually there, something has to come close enough for the window to roll down...

Maybe that is one of the risks of being alive. There is no guarantee that reality will be kinder than the story we have created about it. But there is also no guarantee that it won't be. And sometimes, until we allow ourselves to meet what is actually approaching us, we may never discover that the experience waiting on the other side of our fear is entirely different from the one we have already lived through a hundred times in our minds.

So, to the two handsome men from Wisconsin in the big truck, to the older couple, to that one lady and to everyone who slowed down, stopped, turned around, checked on us... and to whoever may have decided that the barefoot brides of Neal Avenue required police supervision — thank you. You gave us a wonderful story. And you reminded me, once again, how very big people's hearts can be here.