Away from Rushmore we go

Flat or rolling?  That is the question as one drives east through Rapid Falls, SD and beyond .  One leaves the splendor of pine covered granite high hills (the Black Hills, SD), descending to land that can't quite make up its mind!

The landscape seems to be in done in "relief" at times: very flat with depressions dug out by a creek forming a now-verdant "valley"--of sorts--supporting the few trees garnishing the prairie, or hay fields, or sporadic corn field.  I think the land is preparing us for the utter plain-ness that awaits a traveler who ventures deeper and deeper into the plains.  Very gently the land, a mother, eases her children along the way, so that the uninitiated won't recoil at the vastness threatening to engulf the innocent pilgrim....like Sarah, in Sarah Plain and Tall, or Momma in my book Dandelions.  Eventually, a bond of acceptance, communion, and finally brotherhood develops.  Whether overcome or obscured the fear of obscurity-- minuteness--disorientation, diminishes, dissipating, along with the prairie grasses, over the horizon.