Iconic Great Plains 2

 

This shot, from 2012, west of Hawarden, is yet another variation on theme. What's up the hill here is more than a solitary tree--there's three of them, and it's an abandoned cemetery. Three stones, wearied by time and passing seasons, are exactly what they're supposed to be--remembrances. 

This one (south of Highland) has a nice balance--the tree, a veteran of those seasons, takes over visually just as much as the radiant dawn behind it, all of which create some sweet teamwork in this story, an almost coordinated mix between character (the single tree) and setting (a beautiful but not overwhelming prairie dawn). 

And then there's this story. This cottonwood, rangy and monstrously old, was a long-time favorite. My use of past tense suggests where this story is going.

Isn't she something, huge and very much alone just a bit north and east of Lebanon. But then, like all living things, Ecclesiastes might say, all things must pass. Coming up on it in the winter of 2012 was dreadful, like losing a friend.

Truth be told, I've attended more than my share of funerals in the last twenty years, and when they've been friends, I miss 'em. Some put up a gallant fight, but the grim reaper comes for all of us.

That's enough on death and dying, so I'm going to cheat my way back to where all of this started--a single tree on a broad, almost endless plain--cheat because I'm not sure the Texas Hill Country counts as Great Plains. If it does, then this one is yet another take.

We've been from Siouxland long enough. Time to get home again. It's very early here, too early really for a good shot; and if you think you've been here before, you have--south of Highland along a road that really never gets smoothed.

I think I've been at this long enough. This once was taken in 2013, into my third year of retirement, I didn't go out with the camera all that often anymore because we moved out into the country. Hence, fewer icons. Here's one from 2014, on an endless Kansas prairie preserve, one of my all time faves. Not only is the sky a dream, the wave in the land--no, I didn't put it there--just sings, don't you think?

This one isfar closer to home, in the hills along the Little Sioux, south and east of Sutherland. I've been there a dozen times.

This is another favorite, even though the up-close tree has some good neighbors. It's taken on a frigid January morning just off Lake Oahe, the Missouri River, on the far east side of the Cheyenne River Reservation. The golden light is dawn's wonderful Midas touch.

I'm ranging again. Here's another from the Little Sioux River valley, not at all far away. It's like all the others, none quite the same. After the parade I've put up together here, this guy's squatty look makes you giggle. But it's beautiful, isn't it? And that's a good thing all by itself.

That's enough. I could go on for hours and hours, a sure sign of my old age. But how about we end tour with a story of a picture. 

It's hard to know what's most attractive about this shot. Once again, we've got a single tree atop a bare plain, a kissing cousin of the others, but there's more to the story. The perfect rows of corn stubble off to the left, for instance, and the wild and bright whites created by shapely drifts on the leeward side of the fence, not to mention the fence itself; and then the feature that made me get out of the car to get the best story--that lonesome trail of prints left behind by some deer, homeward bound in the winter's cold. 

Maybe I'm just dreaming. Who cares? It's all kind of there in this shot, just west of the Big Sioux one ice-cold January morning. 

I may have talked myself into something here. Thanks for staying with me.