Today is Kansas Day, the anniversary of our statehood at the fringe of the Civil War. In honor of my dear adopted place, I will share a passage from one of my all-time favorite books (and blogger namesake), PrairyErth by William Least Heat-Moon. Kansas is certainly not composed entirely of prairie, but it is arguably our most unique and wonderous ecosystem, and one we share with Oklahoma and Nebraska. So here it is:
"There are several ways not to walk in the prairie, and one of them is with your eye on a far goal, because you then begin to believe you're not closing the distance any more than you would with a mirage ...
... whatever else prairie is -- grass, sky, wind -- it is most of all a paradigm of infinity, a clearing full of many things except boundaries, and its power comes from its apparent limitlessness; there is no such thing as a small prairie any more than there is a little ocean ..."
1 comment:
...or a finite universe.It's hard to summarize the 'feeling' I get reading that passage. It's almost like my mother speaking to me about life. We sometimes miss much of what is going on by focusing on the objective. He may truly be speaking of the prairie but the same truth holds true for our world, our existence.
Post a Comment