Pixelated F-Stops: Flat Lands

I took a vacation day a few weeks ago and spent the morning, getting out and hiking around the Buffalo Gap National Grasslands. A part of me really needed that time. This is dedicated to anyone who needs the world to shut-up and back off.

I've always been partial to wide open space, the kind where
you can't see a person, a car, a road or any other sign of life
besides the clicking of grasshoppers, the flick of a gopher or the little
dots of white moths floating over the grass.
What it must have been like to roll over these foot hill prairies in the
early 1800's, never seeing another soul for day's on end...


The last few years have been nothing but one unending string
of drought baked summers and flat dry winters. Seeing wild
sunflowers on their second bloom and green grass covered
knolls in July has been a wonderful reminder that things
can and will always get better, no matter the situation.


Folsom Baptist Church, built in 1917 A.D. It's
incredible to think of farm families gathering on
Sunday's...first coming in wagons or Model A's for
service and an afternoon of food and society,
followed by later model cars and fewer members
until the town died away leaving only
this clapboard church an a nearby school.


They show these shots in movies...usually just before you find
out that nearly all man-kind was killed in a nuclear holocaust or
zombifying viral out break.
The area isn't quite this abandoned, but one pole-barn school
(closed for the summer) and a cattle sorting yard
don't do much to dispel the empty feeling.


I wish you could capture smells with cameras.
They had just finishing the baling in this field; with the
smell of oil, sun and warm cut grass it smelled like the
perfect summer.


There are a lot of frustrations living in a remote part of
the country...there are a lot of pay-offs too.



My co-adventurer...
more than ready to head back to civilization and air conditioning.