A Deep View of the Prairie

William Least Heat Moon

I started reading PrairyErth, by William Least Heat Moon, back when I first acquired it in the 1990s, but didn't get very far, though I had meant to get back to it in the future. In the meantime, I read another book by Moon, River Horse, which was also very good. My posts about that book started in May 2011, with the post, "Dispatches from Nikawa," and went on for three more posts. It was, like PrairyErth, a very long book.

PrairyErth's subtitle is A Deep Map, which is a metaphor for digging beneath the surface of a place to learn other, more hidden truths. The place being "dug up" in this book is the Flint Hills of Kansas. At the time this book was written, the Flint Hills had not yet been designated a protected area.

The Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve, now under the National Park Service, was created in 1996, after years of negotiations between congress and other stakeholders in the region, such as ranchers.

Spring In The Flint Hills
Photograph by Scott Bean

PrairyErth was published in 1991, and seems to have been written in part to call attention to the area and the necessity for preserving the small, still relatively unchanged percentage of the once-vast natural grasslands of the Great Plains. The book covers just one Kansas county of the region, Chase. As were most of the flat lands of the plains, Kansas was laid out in a grid: most main roads and rail lines going north-south and east-west with towns and even farms set alongside those grid lines. Even today, the flatness of the area allows for straight roads and a clear view of the horizon as you travel along. In Kansas, you always know where you are with respect to the points of the compass (unlike in other areas of the country, where hills and trees and boulders and rivers get in the way of your line of sight).

Of course, the Flint Hills are not flat, but still they conform to the grid pattern, as you can see from this map of a section of Kansas.

Kansas, showing Chase County

The pink square is Chase county (the green section within the county is the Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve). In the book, the author divides that space into twelve equal sections, or quadrangles, each having a principal town or "light" as he calls them, suggesting the view from an airplane at night, looking down on this relatively empty section of Kansas and seeing a few bright spots in the surrounding darkness. The twelve quadrangles form the twelve chapters of the book, and in each chapter Moon describes in detail the history, geography, geology, culture, commerce and citizenry of the small towns and surrounding farms, ranches and grasslands.

Moon organizes the book spatially, but also chronologically in the form of a journal. He moves back and forth between the past and the present as he walks along the roads or through the grasses or up and down the hills or into towns or ranch houses, meeting and chatting with various individuals, some local and some tourists. His language goes from description to philosophy to poetry, evoking a sense of the place and its story through the centuries. There are familiar tales to tell--such as the story of "Bleeding Kansas" and of Knute Rockne's plane crash, both in very particular detail--and other more obscure but no less interesting stories of local tragedy and triumph. His research on Chase County appears to have been vast as well as particular, both of the past and the present, of the flora and fauna (including the human kind), of the biologic and the geologic. There can be no one with more expertise on Chase County than William Least Heat Moon.

It took me several weeks to finish the 624 pages of this book, but it was well worth it. It's amazingly rich and beautifully written. It increased my understanding on a range of subjects and levels. Though I lived in the region for nine years, I felt I didn't fully know it or appreciate it until I read this book, and it makes me wonder if even life-long residents of the Flint Hills might feel the same way after reading PrairyErth.

I recommend this book highly.

Next, something very different: Michael Moore's autobiography, Here Comes Trouble.