Essays & Road Stories  |  Postcards from the Past

May 2001
I Sail The Prairie Sea

To Whom:

I am safe at harbor. Sanctuary is a rent-controlled, two-bedroom two-bath in West Hollywood, CA, one patient girlfriend, two frighteningly vivacious cats, one battered old upright piano, and the knowledge that I'll wake up in the morning knowing where the hell I am. Once again, in the name of art and commerce (ya can't have one without the other, no matter what they say), I gotta kiss it all b'bye. For better or for worse – I set sail tomorrow.

My craft is a green 1998 Dodge minivan. It is only two and a half years old, but the odometer is already at 150,000 and counting. In the morning I will top off the tank and set sail for that vast continental ocean they call Nebraska. I will follow the Gulf Stream along route 80. When this country was powered by steam instead of gasoline, what is now Interstate 80 was the route of the great transcontinental railroad. Before that, when we were simply on foot, scared to death, and scanning the impossibly vast horizons for something…anything – it was, as it still is, the route of the Great Platte River. What the sand cranes have always known, it took us years to figure out.

At night the prairie looks like water. An endless, calm, glassy ocean of land for as far as the eye can see. In daylight the illusion is somewhat shattered, but not completely. The prairie, like the ocean, reminds you of exactly how small you are in the grand scheme of things. A minor malignancy drifting through the veins and arteries of the continent…the asphalt blood vessels of the Republic, otherwise known as the American Interstate Highway System. Eisenhower's cold-war paranoia made concrete.

There is more than mere repetition here, though. This is easily missed if you're not paying attention. There is a certain subtle beauty in how western Nebraska slowly turns to eastern Nebraska. The arid desert West slowly becoming the fertile farmland of the Midwest. It's a long way from Ogallala to Omaha – and not just in miles. I grew up in the Northeast. Suburban New Jersey. A thirty minute drive from the Lincoln Tunnel tollbooth. A place where the cities grow up, not out. A place of boundaries. These wide open spaces in the middle of America scare me sometimes. I feel vulnerable. Defenseless. People from this part of the country tell me that all of this open space makes them feel free. Secure.

Perspective, I guess...
I've adjusted somewhat, though: what I once viewed as a vast wasteland is now a place I have learned to appreciate the hard way. The hard way is the only way anyone ever gets to love a place like this – that's the one thing those of us from New Jersey have in common with people from Nebraska. A friend of mine, Rick Galusha, has lived in Nebraska all his life. Once, when we were driving the sixty or so miles from Omaha to Lincoln, he pointed out a creek with a few bent trees around it, surrounded by an otherwise featureless landscape. He said, "That's one of my favorite spots” he said, “it's beautiful." And I thought: it is beautiful, but I never would have noticed if he hadn't pointed it out.

That, to me, is the essence of this place. There's beauty everywhere you look, it's just that sometimes, someone's got to point it out.

Love, Bob