Open Prairie :: 1998
Peters Pasture felt wild when I was young. Brown and black horses grazed out there without any fences to keep them in. They roamed free, even running together with their long manes blowing, until they returned to their stalls somewhere near the river at dusk. They never seemed to wander onto the adjacent streets, or peoples nearby lawns, the ones with thick green grass. It was a big chunk of land, maybe fifteen acres that reached between and separated three neighborhoods, but it felt much bigger than that because the southern end merged with open prairie.
Our neighborhood had typical orderly streets with simple houses, from small ramblers and contractor homes to modest two-story ones. It was called Grande Vista and most of the streets had Spanish names too. I don’t know why all the names were in Spanish, but it was called that because of the views, and if you were on the edges of it there were big ones. When walking into the nearby fields to the south, it was easy to see the terrain slowly rise to the western bluffs and gradually descend towards the Missouri River to the southeast. Hiking even further out, I could see the Highwoods and Little Belt Mountains which were just hazy blue silhouettes. Years later they became more defined because as I got older, we would ski, swim, hike, camp, and gather with family and friends in them.
Our neighborhood was west of the pasture. The neighborhood to the north was called the Country Club, because it bordered a golf course. The third neighborhood on the east side of the pasture was radically different from the other two. Homes were sparse on bigger tracts of land, and the families who lived there had horses, out buildings, and property near the river. I imagined their lifestyles were exotic too because they could interact with their horses, go fishing, and water ski from their docks all in one day.
Since the pasture felt off-limits early on, my interaction was limited to the perimeter. As I got older, I found ways around it which opened-up everything. To get to the river, I stayed south of the pasture and hiked across the windy prairie where the Meadowlarks were and the grasshoppers scattered. Sometimes I was alone and other times I was with friends. Either way, the adventures always began at the same spot and continued along the river for hours. We crawled over and under enormous, downed trees, and skirted thin sandy beaches, snags, and rocks. Next to the river there was less wind, so the smell of sweet grass permeated the afternoon. Sometimes we built forts that were tucked into the cut banks which remained there until high water washed them away. Many miles downstream, too far to walk to, the land changed from prairie and cottonwood trees lining the Missouri, to mountains with shear rock faces and canyon pine.
Songs :: Loom by Olafur Arnalds, Comes a Time by Neil Young, Let it Flow by Elvin Bishop, Green Grass and High Tides by The Outlaws, and Small Town by Aaron Espe
© C. Davidson