Land at the Edge of the Sky
Aspirations
Initially, I aspired to model this writing quest on a book that impressed me a lot back in the 1990s….back at the beginning of the Anthropocene (Google it!). Prairie Eryth (1991) by William Least-Heat Moon focused on a specific place—a county in Kansas—and drilled down into the natural history and human history to produce what he called “Deep Maps”.
As a geologist and academic back then, the idea of Deep Maps was appealing to me. After all, my professional career revolved around interpretations of landscapes during the Age of Dinosaurs (a.k.a. paleogeographic reconstructions for the Cretaceous Period in the technical science jargon that I was used to). Now, as a retiree and aspiring writer focused on a particular place, the phrase Deep Maps is still intriguing.
However, I don’t remember much specific about the book, so I checked out the Wikipedia article. Damn! Everything was much more complicated than I remembered. The author was a professor who was probably not Native American and reactions and reviews of the book were definitely mixed.
The most troubling comment came from a regional author who I admired because he lifted up life in the Midwest as a valid literary pursuit. His judgement of Moon’s book:
“When he listens, Chase County, Kansas, comes to life, and the air is full of the sound of meadowlarks. When he speaks, all the other voices--the true voices of Kansas--fall silent.”
Moon becomes the central figure more important than the Land itself. That’s not helpful!
Okay! So, I need to aspire to something other than the Deep Maps of Prairie Eryth. I remember not reading the last chapters of Waldon Pond because I knew that Thoreau left the woods and I didn’t want that fantasy to end. But, that’s back east in the Massachusetts forest. I also admired the work of Loren Eisley who wrote lyric books describing science and prairie life. But, that was “back in the day” and Eisley never got the attention that Thoreau has had. More recently a friend recommended The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate (2009) because I’ve gotten interested literature of young adults. But that’s set in Texas which is a long way south of my area of interest in eastern South Dakota, southwestern Minnesota, and northwestern Iowa.
There generally are not many books about my place of interest. But over the past five years or so, four collections of essays have been published that describe the region, a state, a watershed, and a city in progressively more detail. Unfortunately, 75% of the more than 100 essays were written by men. Although it’s hard to tell financial status, age, or ethnicity from a list of names, it’s probably safe to say that most are privileged, old, white guys (POWGs).
These essays present narratives of the Land from the perspective of “my” people because I’m a POWG! I have academic credentials and generational wealth ; I’m at the leading edge of the demographic Boomer bulge; my genes are dominantly from Ireland, Scotland and Wales; and I identify as male because there didn’t used to be so many choices. So even though it’s the right geographic area, these narratives don’t necessarily represent stories from the Land that have a universal appeal. These are stories told from POV (point of view) of POWGs and there are alternatives.
There’s some synchronicity at work here. Just this past Sunday I heard a woman preach about the Canaanite woman in Christian scripture (Matthew 15, 15-28). She challenged Jesus and he acknowledged the importance of her faith. The pastor’s conclusion was that persistent women have changed the dominant narratives down through the ages. Also earlier this week, hearings opened before the Iowa Public Utilities Board regarding pipeline routes over agricultural lands. The first three land owners to testify were women opposed to the routes because of environmental, cultural, and economic concerns. The dominant narrative has been that the pipelines are good for economic development.
Then today (August 24, 2023) I watched a Zoom presentation by an author who speaks directly to the issue of Land Narratives. In her book We Are the Stars—Colonizing and Decolonizing the Oceti Sakowin Literary Tradition (2023), Sarah Hernandez lifts up the Land Narratives articulated by Dakota women. This is an important perspective because the Dakota people have deep roots in this place and provide a significant alternative to the POV provided by POWGs. These alternatives are important aspirations for me. “There’s something happening here….”
After this initial post, I’ll do one on “Preparation—Finding the Place”, followed by one on “Location—Naming the Place”, and then one called “Inspiration—The Land at the Edge of the Sky”. And after that, we’ll see what directions this place-based writing quest takes us. I’ll probably do one or two posts a month, after the initial four teasers. Please join me in this exploration by subscribing to this “newsletter”.