Think of Colorado. Let your mind rest there. Craggy mountains, lodgepole and ponderosa pines reaching skyward, alpine lakes glistening green and blue under a cool summer sun. From Denver, it’s also 200 miles of prairie on Highway 76 before you reach the Nebraska line. In fact, some variety of prairie makes up the entire eastern third of the state.
That’s ok, there’s beauty to be found in the prairie, too. At 70 mph, north-eastern Colorado looks like an impressionistic painting if you relax your eyes a bit. Bright, middle green-colored grasses the length of a child’s hand cover the ground from the highway’s edge to up and over the chunky rolling hills. Thin, yellow-tan, knee-high leftovers from the native short-grass prairie days wave above it all in the ever present wind. A two-tone effect that exists together, yet independently.
Fassh fussh shht fffffff
Heavy wind gusts push against the truck with every bend northward, the highway snaking and bending ever closer to Ogallala.
Delicate, petite-headed sunflowers a meter tall hold fast, rooted in the disturbed ground that edges the highway and the dirt roads running parallel with and perpendicular to us. From road to hilltop, these bands of green and yellow fade into a light blue sky so soft it reminds me of a raggedy, bleach-stained kitchen towel I had back in the day.
No, the prairie’s not bad if you let its beauty whisper a bit.
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