Skip to content

I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore


We made spanking time:  crossed all of Kansas, made it to Limon, Colorado (and the best ribeye in I can remember), and got our first glimpse of vertical: Pike’s Peak at long range.

View CRPS – Art & Spirit: renew, refine, research, revise in a larger map
Kansas was unbelievably flat. Not quite as flat as a billiard table, because those are too small to really convey the right impression.  Every now and then, there was a bit of texture — a teeny dell, a couple yards deep; a bit of watering hole; something. I’d stare at it in relief.

Then the landscape went back to flat. Really damn flat. I mean, flat, flat, flat, flat, flat.

Flatter.

The conservatism that’s such a feature of the Midwest makes some sense when you see it. The whole place is so flat (especially Kansas!) that there’s no privacy. You have to plant dozens of trees around your house before you can have any hope of discretion.

With such a constant sense of exposure, doesn’t it make sense that people would edit their own behavior before it can be edited for them? We all behave more carefully when we feel we’re being watched. Around here, it’s hard not to watch anything that isn’t …. flat.

Tomorrow, my sweetie assures me, there will be terrain. Lots of it.

1 thought on “I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore”

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *