- Share This Post
- submit
- 0
-
Sparkle (0)
It took me a while, but I finally know why folks out here on the Great Plains call this God’s country.
In the beginning I didn’t see it, couldn’t see it, so blinded was I by my New England-centric definition of beauty. I’ll never forget the first night Brad and I pulled into town. As we puttered up to the Super 8 in the lurching U-Haul, I glimpsed a grain elevator rising over Highway 2. “What the hell is that?” I asked Brad, horrified by the sight of the peeling concrete, its mass hovering over the highway like an abandoned war ship. It was hideously ugly, and the sight of such an eyesore angered me.
The landscape was just too vast for me to appreciate. I couldn’t see its subtle beauty; all I saw was its sameness, its homogeneity. Same old rows of corn and soybeans; same old November dirt; same old dilapidated barns.
Today, it’s a different story. Today I see beauty in the light as it basks lazily over seas of undulating grass. Today I see the lone gnarled tree, rooted strong, a beacon to pioneers past. Today I see two boys chasing grasshoppers, rippling sunflowers bowing sunny heads, as if nodding in appreciation.
Today, as the sun rises and sets on this land, this place I now call home, I see God’s hand everywhere.
