The Prairie

Big Sky Country. That's what they called it. 

Back in my salad days, I spent some time living in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. Gazing east, the flat plains of Montana spread out before me, an endless sweep of grass and rutted dirt roads. Squinting into the morning sun, it was difficult to see the horizon. The expanse was so vast it played tricks on the eyes of even the most ardent observer. 

This past week I finished reading Dakota, the autobiography of novelist Kathleen Norris. In it she details the impact of countless summers spent on the flat and desolate landscape of South Dakota. The "spiritual geography" of her youth.

Like Norris, the flinty emptiness of the prairie has never left me, still calling to me in haunted whispers.....

"It's a dangerous place, this vast ocean of prairie. Something happens to us here." - Kathleen Norris