Friday, May 30, 2008

Must read IMHO


Truth is, I've only been to the fringes of the prairies.
It is hard to love a land you don’t understand, and for most of my life I had no idea why anyone would ever live in the Great Plains – let alone love the place.

Flat, featureless, boring. Those were the words I heard growing up whenever someone would mention the plains. My view was informed by Dorothy’s Kansas, which looked scary and Gothic even before the twister took her house and Toto, too.

But then I spent some time here, mostly listening to people in the twilight of their lives tell about the land when it turned on them, during the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. At the end of a long day of hearing stories, I would go for a run in the wind, and sometimes get a glimpse of the magic of the place — a pronghorn antelope in a sprint, a sky blushing pink, the quiet when the air finally settles.

Note: Headline links to source.

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2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

I grew up spending a lot of time on those prairies and it was beautiful. The problem was, all that wide open space didn't seem to spread between the ears of most inhabitants OF the prairies....so I had to leave.

5/30/2008 11:28:00 PM  
Blogger SPIIDERWEB™ said...

I spent most of my years among the magnificent firs of the northwest which the locals rarely recognized for their beauty.

People can be so strange sometimes.

5/31/2008 12:52:00 AM  

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