Winning the Wilderness

Excerpt

A reach of level prairie bounded only by the edge of the world—misty ravelings of heliotrope and amber, covered only by the arch of heaven—blue, beautiful and pitiless in its far fathomless spaces. To the southwest a triple fold of deeper purple on the horizon line—mere hint of commanding headlands thitherward. Across the face of the prairie streams wandering through shallow clefts, aimlessly, somewhere toward the southeast; their course secured by gentle swells breaking into sheer low bluffs on the side next to the water, or by groups of cottonwood trees and wild plum bushes along their right of way. And farther off the brown indefinite shadowings of half-tamed sand dunes. Aside from these things, a featureless landscape—just grassy ground down here and blue cloud-splashed sky up there.