Morning Thanks--Spirit Mound

Yesterday, from the top of Spirit Mound, you could see in all directions somewhere close to thirty miles, I'm thinking, maybe more. I'm looking north here, slightly northwest. The first white man to put up shop under the 1862 Homestead Act--that man told people that when he moved in, he stood where I'm standing, looking north he'd seen nothing. Just one tree. That's it. No more.

On a clear day, like yesterday, the idea of all that nothing is just stunning. The tall grass prairie here at the emerald edge of the Great Plains was the grassy sea the trappers claimed, just endless prairie. Absolutely nothing out there. Except one tree.

What we see out back in our own prairie right now is a jumble of things almost kaleidoscopic from year to year. Things are never quite the same come June or July. Spirit Mound's vast prairie abounds in Maximillian sunflowers, tall and spindly things that gawk like a gossipy herd of giraffes, so many that the well-worn path to the top is a tunnel, a bright yellow fun house.

There's so many this year, you can't help but think if there weren't, if there were just one-hundredth of many thousands, they'd be, like dandelions could be, real show-stoppers. They're a stadium full of big, golden NBA stars.

From the top, looking south toward the Missouri, a creek bed overflows with them,  gadzillions, solid gold.

From here, on a late August day in 1804, a day so hot they sent Seaman, the big black Newfoundland, back to camp at the river, Lewis and Clark kept climbing the mound looking to find those little 18-inch devils the Yanktons claimed lived up there. The little people were out that day, as they were again yesterday; but from here, the Corp of the Discovery spotted their first herd of buffalo. It was 1804, and so much of what they'd encounter all the way to the Yellowstone was bison, bison, and more bison. But here, for the first time they saw herds that literally spread over the grassy sea in a carpet of woolly fur. 

None yesterday. Only in the imagination. 

For the millions who aren't old folks, yesterday, a holiday, was the last day of summer. For us, not. But then any trek out to and up Spirit Mound seems a holiday. Yesterday, a little hot maybe, but take-your-breath-away beautiful, as always, for which I'm greatly thankful.