I grew up in eastern South Dakota. Two of the things I have always loved about that place are the vast skies and the way the tall grass on the open prairie ripples like waves on a lake, tossed by the nearly incessant wind. Squint a little and you can see the past, into a time before the towns, the highways, the wire and post fences and the yellow squares of lamplight signalling home existed. When there are no houses or buildings around to distract you from your smallness, you get a sense of proportion that is a gentle reminder of our true size in this incomprehensibly enormous universe. One can get a unique kind of clarity experiencing the wide open.
When I was young, I couldn’t wait to get away from the home where it seemed like there was nothing but earth and sky and judgment. I rushed off to experience noise and activity and possibility. Now, saturated with noise and activity, and grieving the crushing death of many of those possibilities, I fantasize about building myself a little cabin off the grid on a small rise in the middle of as much empty as I can find. I long for a place in the openness between earth and sky, where I might quietly wait to see what possibilities clarity can bring.
wordtabulous 
Awesome photos! I dream of a cabin off grid too. Just sometime to really figure out what you really think without all this noise and stuff around.
Thank you! If I build it, you can come! I’ll even go back home and check on the kids so you can have it to yourself for a time!
you talk of open skies and grass lands the way that I think of ocean and beaches – let’s all build tumbleweed houses and good pickup trucks and go where the wind takes us
As a North Dakota born girl, I remember those vast prairies and endless skies. Great images. And I like the new look of your blog!
Thank you! I loved driving through ND last year as we travelled to Yellowstone. It is very similar, but I think the ND Badlands are even more beautiful. It is funny, the things I appreciate more now than I did as a girl: country and bluegrass music, small towns and solitude. I have always loved that changeable sky and the rippling prairie grass, though. Were you a country mouse or a city mouse?
A city mouse. Not too much country in me despite my home state. 🙂
oh so pretty…
Even more so than I used to think. Thanks for stopping in!
Love this, gorgeous. My hubby loved this one, too. He’s an eastern SD boy. He can relate to your thoughts.
Thank you! So good to hear from you!