North Maple Rag

A few years ago, I spent a couple of weeks in London. It's a great place, but I fell ill-at-ease there. As I flew back to South Dakota, I remember watching the land stretch out into the patchwork of the Midwest and exhaling. I hadn't realized it, but I'd been holding my breath the entire time I was abroad. Each time I returned home from DC, I had the same feeling and it happened again last month. I also felt it this summer when I drove from DC to South Dakota. Except then it happened in Indiana when we finally left behind the Appalachain Mountains and their foothills.

I've mentioned the feeling to a few people and I think I may have written about it somewhere other than this blog. After the London trip, I'd thought that maybe I'd just been homesick and that the feeling on the airplane was relief about returning to my family and friends. It's only been recently that I've figured out that there's a special kind of anxiety that can only be cured by the prairie. Anyway, for some selfish reason, I felt like I was the only person to experience it. Of course, I'm not. And now I have proof. M.J. Anderson in Portable Prairie explains it much more eloquently than I have (I hate it when writers do that!):

As the days passed, my fear subsided into a low-grade anxiety that over the years has lessened but never entirely left me. Now, I only notice it when I go home: I see the land rearranging itself around me, relaxing into prairie; the sky unfurling back to its proper immensity, like a fresh white sheet snapped over a bed by competent, vigorous arms. The fear drains out of me. I note, with some surprise, that I have been feeling tense.

Do people who grow up in other environments feel the same thing? I recall a high school exchange student from Norway who would cry because she missed her mountains and I'm sure my friends who grew up in South Dakota's Black Hills have similar thoughts about their mountains. If I'd grown up near the ocean would I feel the same about its expanse as I do about rolling farmland? Probably. But, be warned, the fact that I'm not unique isn't going to stop me from writing about the prairie in the future.