"Three Adjectives"

Because I grew up on a wheat farm in western Kansas and have lived all my life on the plains of Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Nebraska, Saskatchewan, and North Dakota, I’m accustomed to open country. Mountains are all right, I guess, because you can get on top of them and get a good view of the plains. Trees I don’t care for. Now and then I hear friends talking about going on a fall foliage excursion somewhere. This, to me, would be the Inferno.

When we have visitors here in the Red River Valley, they always marvel (or mourn) how “flat” it is. And I always correct them, letting them know that the appropriate usage is “level.”

The greatest of Great Plains historians, Walter P. Webb, said that the Great Plains are level, treeless, and semiarid--a fair likeness. His choice of adjectives focuses on physical geography, however, and says nothing of the human culture of the plains.

I’ve been teaching college courses on the history and culture of the plains for many years, and I used to start out by asking the students, “What are the Great Plains?” That didn’t work, because they kept telling me where the plains are, instead of what they are.

So now I say, “Give me three adjectives to describe the Great Plains.” This works much better. I went through the exercise one fall with thirty NDSU students, most of them from North Dakota, a minority from Minnesota, and a scattering from bordering states. I thought you might be interested in what adjectives they applied to our country.

“Flat” or “level” won out, with sixteen mentions. Closely related were the seven mentions of “open” or “wide-open,” along with the twelve instances of “big,” “large,” “vast,” “wide,” or “expansive.” Then there were the other expected responses--“prairie,” “grassland,” “treeless,” or “grassy” (nine references along these lines) and “windy” or “wind-swept” (six of these).

Things get real interesting when you scan the list of adjectives that are outliers--ones that don’t fit the typical pattern. Quite a number of these are unfavorable: plain, brown, dusty, isolated, barren, desolate, dry. It’s a hard country, no doubt.

Parallel to these, often coming from the same people, is another list that portrays the plains as a wholesome heartland: rolling, progressive, peaceful, plentiful, productive, small-town, historic, and even beautiful. Mixed feelings abound.

Then you come to the most intriguing catalog of adjectives--those that have to do not with the senses, nor with the heart, but with the spirit. These adjectives are a window on the soul: turbulent, volatile, exciting, dangerous, frontier-like, roaming, extreme, breath-taking, rugged, and--my favorite of all--mysterious.

Who wrote that word, “mysterious”? Was it some young horseman who stumbled into a tipi ring on a Souris River hilltop? Was it some young woman who found her grandmother’s cryptic diary? Was it some young person marveling at the abandoned homesteads, boarded-up schools, gray-faded main streets, and other archeological remains of an earlier civilization never to be experienced by the new generation on the plains?

Who wrote that word, “mysterious”?

 

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