By Jeff M"The villages and small towns of America are not dwindling and disappearing because their values are no longer meaningful, but because they no longer work economically, no longer provide the level of services and amenities that most of us demand. No dramatic violence is being done to rural America. It is withering away because it has little function in modern life."
Robert B. Biley, "New Mexico Villages in a Future Landscape" (1969), as cited in PrairyErth by William Least Heat-Moon.
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"Prairies let us out...They aid to grow a roomy life."
William A. Quayle, The Prairie and the Sea (1905)
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We now come to the end of what I began 20 days ago: a brief pictorial journey into an endless place. I'm looking forward to going out next year, but something tells me I'll journey further north --- to Manhattan, Kansas, to the Konza Prairie Preserve. Who knows. Perhaps I'll take an airplane and see and enjoy the expanse from the sky, much like the pilot in the above picture must have felt when he flew over the Red House Pasture.
A woman I found on the internet has a campground near the Konza.
"It's primitive," she said, "and you have to bring your own water. But the ground is soft in places. You can get a stake into it."
There's nothing special in those words, nothing symbolic or grand, but I like the sound of them.
3 comments:
Thanks for the series. I commented on the first, and not the last. I enjoyed them all. They each came up on my Google Blog Alter for Kansas Flint Hills.
Thank you for sharing!
Positive mention of the Flint Hills always gets my attention! Thanks!
So happy it brought me to your site. Hope you and your readers visit regularly.
Our 22 county Flint Hills Tourism Coalition, Inc. promotes visits to the Kansas Flint Hills – the website is: http://www.kansasflinthills.travel/
Best wishes!
Dr. Bill ;-)
Personal Blog: http://flinthillsofkansas.blogspot.com/
I like the campground woman's sentence too. There's something about statements that sound much deeper than they mean to be--usually sentences are the pretentious reverse of that.
Sorry the series is finished, but thanks for doing it.
Yes, this photo project of mine ended at just the right spot, Banjo. A good anything remains good because it ends at just the right time. Like a love affair. Why do you thing Romeo and Juliet died in the end? Why do you think their love was so quick, so fleeting? They died as lovely comets...
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