A mountain just down the road from The Trading Post is known as Sleeping Elephant.
We waved goodbye to the Sleeping Elephant on Saturday morning as we headed to Fort Collins, then south to I-70 where we turned east toward home.
As soon as we turned east, with the Rocky Mountains in our rear-view mirror, I breathed a sigh of relief. Don't get me wrong here; I had a happy week at The Trading Post with family and friends, but I'm a woman in love with the plains. The wide, wide sky and the undulating topography give me a sense of peace and belonging.
Kansas is infamously known as flat, flat, flat. That description is inaccurate. Kansas rolls up and down – gently at first, if you're facing east, and then dramatically through the sixty-mile wide Flinthills. These rolling hills are deceptive because as we travel east the elevation is continually falling. Our destination, Baldwin, is more than 4,000 feet lower than Denver and 7,000 feet lower than The Trading Post. The Kansas' landscape is rolling and tilted.
Mountains seem ominous to me, the prairie benign and peaceful. The prairie is an abstraction: black cattle grazing on green and tan grass, backed by a swath of blue; dark green crop circles formed because of irrigation. It is a feast for my eyes, a simple meal, whereas the mountains are a giant smorgasbord, a surfeit.
I love Paradise, drought or not. It is in the transition zone between prairie and woodland. I love the creek, the thousands of trees, the prairie-like pasture with its wildflowers and grasses. It is the one place on earth where I feel balanced and whole, where I know myself.
Every person has a Paradise, I hope, either physical or imagined. It is the one place on earth where we feel most comfortable, where we find solace and inspiration, where we can be who we are. Paradise is worth hoping for, worth striving for, worth attaining. For some it will be on the prairie, for some the city, for some the small town, and for some at the foot of Sleeping Elephant. May each of us find our Paradise.
We waved goodbye to the Sleeping Elephant on Saturday morning as we headed to Fort Collins, then south to I-70 where we turned east toward home.
As soon as we turned east, with the Rocky Mountains in our rear-view mirror, I breathed a sigh of relief. Don't get me wrong here; I had a happy week at The Trading Post with family and friends, but I'm a woman in love with the plains. The wide, wide sky and the undulating topography give me a sense of peace and belonging.
Kansas is infamously known as flat, flat, flat. That description is inaccurate. Kansas rolls up and down – gently at first, if you're facing east, and then dramatically through the sixty-mile wide Flinthills. These rolling hills are deceptive because as we travel east the elevation is continually falling. Our destination, Baldwin, is more than 4,000 feet lower than Denver and 7,000 feet lower than The Trading Post. The Kansas' landscape is rolling and tilted.
Mountains seem ominous to me, the prairie benign and peaceful. The prairie is an abstraction: black cattle grazing on green and tan grass, backed by a swath of blue; dark green crop circles formed because of irrigation. It is a feast for my eyes, a simple meal, whereas the mountains are a giant smorgasbord, a surfeit.
I love Paradise, drought or not. It is in the transition zone between prairie and woodland. I love the creek, the thousands of trees, the prairie-like pasture with its wildflowers and grasses. It is the one place on earth where I feel balanced and whole, where I know myself.
Every person has a Paradise, I hope, either physical or imagined. It is the one place on earth where we feel most comfortable, where we find solace and inspiration, where we can be who we are. Paradise is worth hoping for, worth striving for, worth attaining. For some it will be on the prairie, for some the city, for some the small town, and for some at the foot of Sleeping Elephant. May each of us find our Paradise.
1 comment:
Amen!
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