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Things I learned from the prairies of northeastern Colorado:
You can see the mountains from a distance for a while, and it's surprising how short a distance you have to travel east before they diminish significantly.
There is a lot of yellow grass and blue sky. As in, so much that you feel about 2 inches tall and about to be engulfed in it, which isn't necessarly a bad feeling. To be swallowed by soft grass and bright colors would be beautiful.
Some farms have these strange power lines that come to a point over their barns. I was unable to determine the actual purpose of these, but did come up with some fantastic hypotheses, such as perhaps they are beaming signals to aliens, or perhaps it is a homing beacon for their cows.
Some residents plant a dense stand of pine or cottonwood trees around their houses, perhaps to make them look less conspicuous? I'm not sure they have been successful in that department. Perhaps they are supposed to serve as something to break the wind, but they're only planted one tree deep so I'm not thinking they are effectively serving that purpose either. Maybe they just like trees.
Some residents prefer not to plant trees.
In the prairie, there seem to be a lot of randomly sticking up structures. I wonder if we have a need to build upward to break the overwhelming depth of infinity in the grass and sky. But hey, if nothing else, at least they have cell phone service and giant maracas!
In the prairie, where there are trees there is usually water.
Some things go on for infinity.
There are many abandoned farms...
...and many beautiful farms.
Some trees are random pioneers, thriving without any visible water source,
while some trees cluster around water to form the prairie's version of a dense forest.
The sky is so massive that even enormous clouds are dwarfed.
I love the irony of this sign, on multiple levels. Note the boasting of "home of arbor day" while there are no trees visible anywhere in the background. Also note the oil pumping machine to the right of the sign (at least, I think that's what the machine is...). I wonder if people who live where there are no trees learn to appreciate them more than those of us who grew up with an abundance of them.
I learned some of the answers to the questions I always ask in airplanes while flying over the prairie: "why are there so many roads out there? where do they even go to? and who uses them, out in the middle of nowhere?" The answers being something like the following: because people need to travel from sprawling farm to sprawling farm, they lead to other random roads, and farmers, truckers, and random people like me use them.
There are strange animals in the prairies of northeastern Colorado that I have never seen before. In addition to these deer goat beings, there were massive flocks of birds monopolizing the road until I approached them. It was almost like driving in a snowstorm at some points, but instead of snowflakes the white flashes in front of my windshield were the underbellies of the birds.
There is a cloud formation that I have seen quite a bit of since moving out here called lenticular clouds. They often form near mountains due to the unique wind conditions that occur there. I remember reading about them back in Connecticut when I was young and being amazed by this special type of cloud that forms only in certain areas, and was delighted (and still am) to see them when I moved out here. In addition to describing the cloud formations, the book I learned about them from stated that people often mistake them for UFOs. Seriously... they are giant clouds! If you stare at them for a moment you can realize that they're not flying around. They are beautiful and unique and I still love seeing them.
There are some very loosely formed lenticular clouds in the bottom left of this picture. If you're curious, I'd suggest looking them up on the internet to see what some really solid ones look like. :)
While driving on route 71, I saw some windmills perched along pinkish bluffs to the east of me, and decided that I needed to find them. I dead-ended on the first two eastward roads I tried, but the third was the charm and it carried me right to them. They say that in prairies distances are deceiving which I think is somewhat true based on my limited experiences, but my windmill tour only took me an hour or two out of the way.
Standing among an infinity of windmills filled me with an amazing sense of awe.
I saw a good number of random metal structures waiting alongside the road. Who and what are they waiting for?
As I took this picture with the sky pressing down on me and the ground lifting me up, nothing but flat land stretching out from every direction for miles, I asked myself two questions: one, what am I doing here again? and two, do I even care? This is neat.
And of course, a beautiful prairie sunset:
1 comments:
deer goats = Pronghorn antelope
random metal structure = oil storage tanks
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