Waking up in Kansas

I slept like crap and woke up around 715 central time. Dawns early light was starting to show it's face. I immediately pulled out my camera and started snapping photos. I checked the map. Kansas , maybe 50-60 miles from Colorodo. Their was still time.

I had always wanted to see the flat grasslands of Kansas. Yes I know it just seems boring and you grew up around mountains and trees and water, why would you want to see flat open fields of prairie? That's exactly why! For some reason I've always had a thing for those places, where you can look and see 25 miles out in the distance. To me I guess it's such an iconic American image.

Words cannot describe the beauty I see before me. Looking out upon these golden fields of grasslands, these golden fields of wheat, it's as if your looking back in time to a different era in American life. Rolling past abandoned farms, I am reminded of stories my friends johns mom told of growing up in rural Colorado on a farm. She talked about how their would be broken down equipment and cars around the farm and how everyone would of moved into trailers cause the old house was so beaten down.

As it got lighter I saw that we where leaving western Kansas and had crossed into eastern Colorado. It looked the same and I could see farms that went on forever. Empty irrigation ditches where everywhere, reminding me of the dark warning at the end of the Dust Bowl documentary I had seen on PBS .

I still though couldn't get over it. Waking up and seeing all of this beauty before me. Now I understand why Terrance Malick makes the movies he does, having grown up around this . This is the America I know from films, books and paintings. This is the myth they teach you about in school. The myth of Johnny applesead, Paul bunyon, and picos bill. The myth of john Wayne and Gary cooper. This isn't your Eastwood America . This is your Custer was a good guy, watch out for the savages west. Even with these faults one most appreciate the natural beauty before you. So I sit back and enjoy the early morning glow as I travel west.