The Open Prairie

There’s not a lot of mystery in the Nebraska prairie, at least not in the parts where I grew up, and, strangely, one can lose themselves in that. That was the thing I most realized this time going back; newly amazed by the flatness of the land, the sky that seems twice as big here, and the fields with just a lone tree that go on for miles.

There’s just nowhere to go, nowhere to hide, and that’s almost more terrifying then knowing something could be in any dip of the hills, any shadow in a valley, behind a larger than normal wave, or in a jungle forest.

It’s a feeling of isolation, an astonishment at how it could be just me as far as I can see, because here, I can see exactly to the ends of the earth. It is 3.1 miles until the curve of the earth drops away, until the sky takes over from the horizon, and I can see every one of those miles from here.

There is no concealment, not for me, not for the car coming down the road in front of me, not for the farmhouses that occasionally pepper the fields. No cover for the rabbits and prairie dogs from the hawks sweeping overhead and watching, always watching. They have nothing except for holes that they have dug underneath the ground.

We’ve done a lot of mountaintop views in our lives lately; views that are sweeping and wide. They make me feel like I am on top of the world, like everything I see is spread out at my feet. It gives a larger than life feeling. I can look out a the horizon, and then look back close again and see the place that I will climb back down, I can see the valley where my house is, or where my car is parked, and I know that it will have a different view and be a different place then where I am right now.

But the open prairie is the opposite. It makes me feel like the world is on top of me, like it could make me lost and then choose not to find me again and no one would be the wiser. I can see the horizon full of directions where I can walk, and almost none of them are different from where I am standing. Here, there is nothing to compare myself to other than the great big blue of the sky. The cornfields and grass fields stretch on for miles, miles beyond what I can see. Everything is the same, and maybe everything is supposed to stay that way, maybe if there was ever a land that just…stays…this is the land.

But if there was supposed to be something different, if there was supposed to be a change, and the land provides none for miles, then all that responsibility lies on me. There is nothing else that is different. There is just me.

I think back to some of the books I read growing up; the Laura Ingalls Wilder books, the Willa Cather books, the ones where I have forgotten their names. But I remember the language that they use, words like ‘vastness’, ‘openness’, how they tried to put into words the feeling like they have been swallowed up and will never find their way out. And of course, in many of them, the quintessential prairie horror story: getting lost in a blizzard and knowing there is nothing, literally nothing, no trees, no houses, and no people between you and freezing to death.

And it makes me think of how we live our lives, how we distract ourselves with real things and with shadows, how we often go looking for things so that we do not have to face the truth, or ourselves, or each other. How we often run from open places; unwilling or unable to face them. How we run from the places where we are alone. Maybe that’s the pull of the Great Plains after all. There is nowhere to hide here, and you must face yourself. There are no distractions, no interference, and no interruptions between your life and yourself. It is just you, and the land, and the sky.

 

 

And if it sounds idyllic, it can be. And if it sounds terrifying, it can be.

Here, it is simply the solid, plain, absolute facts that can destroy you.

Here, it is knowing exactly where you stand, and how, and when, and why that can take a toll.

Here, it is the beauty of simple vastness that can almost drive a woman crazy.