The Plains

The Wyoming Plains looking East near the Nebraska line
©  JDL

"A person is forced inward by the spareness of what is outward and visible in all this land and sky. The beauty of the Plains is like that of an icon...what seems stern and almost empty is merely open, a door into some simple and holy state." 

Kathleen Norris quoted in The Solace of Fierce Landscapes, by Belden Lane, p. 36

Most of the Rocky Mountain Synod isn't rocky or mountain. Most is high plains, prairie, a vast gently rolling steppe, sometimes as empty and wild and desolate, and even as dangerous as the highest mountains. Here we have our severest weather : heat like you can't believe, constant hot dry winds, tornadoes, the world's most active hail region, bitter cold and clouds like nowhere else on the planet. Fields of corn and wheat as far as the eye can see. It is a landscape for the soul, one that strips us bare and in the best sense of the word, makes us "plain."

Where is your favorite place on the Plains? What memories are attached to it?

Jeffrey Louden