I've been told by visitors from a more diverse countryside that our pancake-flat fields of corn and soybeans, reaching from horizon to horizon, can be disconcerting. Someone from Oklahoma told me, after we drove through a gaunlet of 10-ft. high corn fields, "I've got to get out of here, it's way too green!"
I didn't know it was possible to be too green! I do know that when that when settlers reached the edge of the forests and faced the immense expanse of the great prairies, they gave pause before stepping into that great unknown. Some women actually stood their ground and refused to take another step, the great sea of prairie threatening to swallow them up forever.
Any slightly hilly stretch of road is an interesting and welcome break from the monotony. This is a lovely field of soybeans, back when there was some hope that the crops might somehow survive this summers drought.
4 comments:
The same is the case in western Kansas. Flat and far. In the novel Giants in the Earth the main character's wife goes insane in part because she cannot cope with the openenss of the Minnesota prairie where they have settled. (Also a bit of religious mania and of course the incredible hardships of pioneer life.)
I'm glad rural vistas are so photogenic. Otherwise the rest of the world would probably forget that there is a farmbelt. I love driving down gravel country roads.
Beautiful picture!!
I too have heard the "too green" comment and I always stare dumbfounded. Too green? Too much life?
I love those curvy two lanes during the day, but am scared to DEATH of them at night!
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