I feel good when I can see all the way to the edge, to that long and flat horizon. Those of you who live where there are hills and trees surely think I am deranged, but I don’t have any apologies.

I’ve not always been able to recognize or admit to my love of this flat place. It stated to change one summer night when we were staying in a cabin in the Colorado Rockies. A storm came up, with lots of thunder and lightning; usually storms like that are exciting, but this night I was edgy and restless and paced around the cabin until the last echos of thunder had faded. Later – several years later, because sometimes I am really slow about stuff – I began to understand the storm made me nervous because I wasn’t able to see where it was in relation to where I was. The so-called scenery was blocking my view! As you can imagine by looking at the photo, we can see a storm from miles and miles away: there’s comfort in that.

(Of course, with land this flat, there’s a whole genre of “it’s so flat that…” jokes, most of which are just as funny as you’d think. The only one I really like is “it’s so flat that if you stare long enough at the horizon, you can see the back of your head.”)

Hale County, Texas
photographed 8.10.2019