Uncharted Territory

Northeastern Oregon, 3/25/08

There's something about the prairie that both stills my heart and makes it ache in earning. I'm not sure when my fascination with the prairie started - was it a family road-trip as a child or that first night in eastern Wyoming where I first felt "home." I know, weird. I'm a western Washington girl - I grew up in one of the most abundant and beautiful areas of the nation. And yet the open prairie calls to me.

I see in the prairie. Looking across to the horizon I know there is a horizon there without the obstruction of trees. Sometimes I just feel claustrophobic in western Washington - smothered by the green. A trip east usually eases my pain, at least for a little while. I see in the prairie life as I don't see it in the ever green trees of western Washington. I began to ask myself why as I journeyed through eastern Oregon to the Wallowa Mountains and Zumwault Prairie.

The answer I found is that I can experience the life cycle of nature far more closely here in the vast openness of the prairie. Spring sets life in motion, the natural world feels young again. Summer brings in the ripeness of the earth, the preparation to to fulfill its destiny of re-creation. Fall of course is the harvest when all things prepare for the blanket of winter comes to insulate nature for the coming spring and rebirth. Here I feel the natural world at its most primal - as was intended from the beginning. Life happens and I see it in the prairie.