river country

For the last 15 years, I have lived at the confluence of two large rivers.  It is a community full of rivers and creeks and tributaries.  In a place where it floods and when the land is dry, the mosquitos will eat you whole.  I love this place.  I love the way the prairie slides into gentle hills carved by the movement of water.  I love the ponds and lakes left behind when the water went somewhere else.

I grew up in a Nebraska city on the prairie.  Spending summers visiting a working family ranch....hogs, chickens and cattle raised to put food on the table; or staying with my grandmother in a small friendly farming town, where she owned the grocery.  These are the sorts of place where, when you are driving through town and you happen to see a vehicle pass you on the road (you must understand that it doesn't happen very often) you raise two fingers--the index and middle--in a salute that says:

heythereiseeyouandimnotsureifiknowyoubutwearefriendlyaroundhere sojustincase...hey

But please remember...and this part is very important...the whole while you give that salute you don't full-on smile.  You are allowed to nod.  And you certainly do NOT raise your hand off the steering wheel.  I mean, hell, they don't want you to go too overboard with the friendly stuff because they've got irrigation pipe to move or have just gotten word that the combine part they've been waiting on has arrived down at the co-op.  Plus, there is pie at the diner and if they hurry, there is still a chance to catch a slice and not ruin supper.  (Dinner is at noontime in these parts.)

Photo from here.

So all this to say, despite living in river country, I remain a girl of the prairie.  Yes, yes.  I grew up in the city.  But in terms of natural geography, I affiliate with the prairie.

Earlier this evening I was pondering upon the nature of this place I live; considering whether I could live in another.  And that lead me to think of the lawless nature of my heart.  I don't think it is held in place between the rivers.  It is not pinched and moved by running water.  My heart feels like the prairie.  Open and slightly wild.  A place where the wind ripples through the tall grass and the sky is bigger than anywhere else.  A place where the grass is rooted but moves with the breeze...where that grass dances and sways its hips beneath the power of that which is bigger  than it can dream of being on its own.

Yes, my soul is that of a prairie girl...untamed but rooted...glorifying in that which is bigger than me...under the great dome of big sky.

I leave you with the words of perhaps the greatest of all the Nebraska girls, Willa Cather from My Antonia:

“The earth was warm under me, and warm as I crumbled it through my fingers…I kept as still as I could. Nothing happened. I did not expect anything to happen. I was something that lay under the sun and felt it, like the pumpkins, and I did not want to be anything more. I was entirely happy. Perhaps we feel like that when we die and become a part of something entire, whether it is sun and air, or goodness and knowledge. At any rate, that is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great. When it comes to one, it comes as naturally as sleep.”