They call it flyover land. I define it roughly as the region west of Kansas City and east of Limon, in Colorado. The actual physiographic boundaries used by most geographers are somewhat different: from the Front Range in the west to the tallgrass prairies in the east, from Manitoba and Saskatchewan in the north all the way down to Texas. It’s home to more extreme weather events (i.e. tornadoes) than just about anyplace else on earth. And it’s emptying. There are 6,000 ghost towns in Kansas, my favorite part of it, alone. I’m referring, of course, to the Great Plains, one of the vastest examples of steppe topography on the planet.
I’m not a painter, but if I was, I’d think this a subject of landscape I could spend the rest of my life painting. I’m not a Zen practitioner. If I were, I might make these horizons the object of my meditation. Out here, there is land and sky. The marriage of earth goddess and sky god. The clean line of the horizon.
I grew up in Chicago but fell in love with the west. I don’t mind driving. Love it as a matter of fact and practice. So, take long voyages across the plains. I’ve done 90, 80, 70, and 40. I’m talking interstate, not MPH. My favorite drive is through Kansas along I-70. I came to love this part of the journey as much as my destinations in the desert. Life is indeed the ride, and not the parking spot at the end.
I’ve set a few of my novels out here, or at least parts of them. I often write of characters on the run. Writers always write themselves, at least partly. I love the road, cleaved of superfluity in the starkness of a winter gloaming as I ride into the light. My characters hide in these small towns, taking refuge in the atolls that dot the swaying seas of grass. They may stop and say a few rusty prayers in the back pews of the red bricked churches or nap in midday in the green hollows and treed rivers.
I knew a man who came from here. He landed in Chicago, washed up on its brutal shores, an exile like me. Only he didn’t make it. I visited his grave out here, on the edge of the cemetery, on the edge of town, on the edge of forever. Wheat, milo, like the gentle grass of his beard. His spirit wafts over the heaving folds of the Flint Hills he’d been born to, and to which he’d returned.
Flyover land. You get to the idea that what others leave behind, what they pass over, is the gold, and what they seek in LA or NYC or DC, is the dross. The golden shafts grow here. They’re yours because no one else wants them. The horizon is clean, cleaved from the conurbations and publicists. With Mains short yet bricked with storefronts that hold the memories of ghosts.
I stand in the face of dusk. Lines straight as far as I can see: horizon lines, roads, rails. Above them, bolts of cloud stained violet and dirty gold, the see-through hearts of angels splashed upon the turquoise sky.
It’s the emptiness I come for, November cold lashing my cheek as I face the icy winds from the vast and endless west. It holds the promise of where I’m going.
© 2022 by Michael C. Just
Mike’s novel, The Dirt: The Journey of a Mystic Cowboy, is available in softcover or eBook formats through Amazon.
You can purchase the book through this website. Or go straight to amazon at https://www.amazon.com/s?k=the+dirt+journey+of+a+mystic+cowboy&crid=1S40Q4BXSUWJ6&sprefix=the+dirt%3A+journey+of+a+m%2Caps%2C180&ref=nb_sb_ss_i_1_23
Mike’s other titles, including The Crippy, The Mind Altar, and Canyon Calls, are available through this website or through Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B002
Four of his short stories have recently been published online:
Lies, Ltd. has been published by The Mystery Tribune @ Lies, Ltd.: Literary Short Fiction by Michael C. Just (mysterytribune.com)
The Obligate Carnivore has been published by the Scarlet Leaf Review @ Category: MICHAEL JUST – SCARLET LEAF REVIEW
I See You, Too has been published by the 96th of October @ I See You, Too – 96th of October
Offload, a short story about a man who can heal any disease, is now live and can be read at The Worlds Within at Offload – The Worlds Within