Nothing.

Dance.

Evans, Bluestem Grassland, Chase County, Kansas, 31 October, 1979, 1979

I remember the swish of big blue stem rolling above my head, the shushbrush of Indian grass soft against my arms, the rattle of wild indigo in a dry September wind. Lived experience and ancestral memory blur in the hypnotic sway of grass. The ground rumbles with buffalo. Is this homesickness for what I left behind or for what has left me?

If you stand among in the Tallgrass prairie you can discern the different sounds of the collective swoosh. Stems clack together at the base, the waist-high leaves rub with grasshopper buzz and the seed heads are a soft hiss dissipating above my head. Goldfinches bounce their wavy flight pattern above the waves, the rise and fall of their voices mirror their path and the surge of moving grass. The sound of the prairie is like the inhale and exhale of the land itself. The boom of a prairie chicken, the lilt of a bobolink, the rasp of a Sandhill crane – these are voices you may never hear.

But they linger in our Potawatomi language. You can hear that same sibilance in the word for grass, Mishkos. Feel the grass in the delicious onomatopoeia of ishpashkosiwagaa – the place of high grass. This liquid language rippled through the southern Great Lakes where Potawatomi and other nations made their homes. You won’t hear that either. Unless concealed in the word for what is now called Chicago, chi gagua taking its name from the skunky smell of wild onions that grew in the wet lakeshore prairie.

My grandmother’s name was Shanode, Wind Coming Through. Wind is the dance partner of the prairie. And every grass species has a different move; the whole stem of Little Bluestem shimmies in the wind, Indian Grass arches and falls, while Big bluestem waggles at the top and vibrates at the bottom. Switchgrass pirouettes in the air. Prairie Dropseed leaps like a fountain. A ballet of wind and grass – a dance that you may never see.

CONNECT

Thank you, Rachel.

Big.

Relation.

Curtis, Navajo Riders, Canyon de Chelly, Arizona, 1904

The DELIGHT SONG of TSOAI-TALEE

I am a feather on the bright sky

I am the blue horse that runs in the plain

I am the fish that rolls, shining, in the water

I am the shadow that follows a child

I am the evening light, the lustre of meadows

I am an eagle playing with the wind

I am a cluster of bright beads

I am the farthest star

I am the cold of dawn

I am the roaring of the rain

I am the glitter on the crust of the snow

I am the long track of the moon in a lake

I am a flame of four colors

I am a deer standing away in the dusk

I am a field of sumac and the pomme blanche

I am an angle of geese in the winter sky

I am the hunger of a young wolf

I am the whole dream of these things

You see, I am alive, I am alive

I stand in good relation to the earth

I stand in good relation to the gods

I stand in good relation to all that is beautiful

I stand in good relation to the daughter of Tsen-tainte

You see, I am alive, I am alive

N. Scott Momaday

Discover.

As to when I shall visit civilization, it will not be soon, I think.  I have not tired of the wilderness; rather, I enjoy its beauty and the vagrant life I lead, more keenly all the time.

I prefer the saddle to the streetcar and the star-sprinkled sky to a roof, the obscure and difficult trail, leading into the unknown, to any paved highway, and the deep peace of the wild to the discontent bred by cities.

Do you blame me then for staying here, where I feel that I belong and am one with the world around me?

It is enough that I am surrounded by beauty.  I know that I could not bear the routine and humdrum of the life that you are forced to lead.

I don't think I could ever settle down.  I have known too much of the depths of life already, and I would prefer anything to an anticlimax.

I have always been unsatisfied with life as most people live it. 

 Always I want to live more intensely and richly.

Why muck and conceal one's true longings and loves, when by speaking of them one might find someone to understand them, and by acting on them one might discover oneself?

Everett Ruess

Thank You, Jessica!  What an adventure!

Enormous.

Jackson, Flaming Gorge, 1870

Before snapshots, photography was difficult, technical, cumbersome—and reserved for experts like William Henry Jackson. But Jackson’s influence on the public perception of the American West was enormous.

CONNECT

Jay Farrar, "Big Sur"

Settling down with warm-glow wood stove and kerosene
Peace you're looking for, peace you'll find
In the tangled mad cliff-sides and crashing dark of Big Sur
Rapturous ring of silence pacific fury flashing on the rocks, the sea shroud towers
The innocence of health and stillness in the wild of Big Sur