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Perhaps the buffalo will return
Jan. 17th, 2008 01:51 amThe disappearing Prairies....
The wallpaper of my journal echoes this article. The northern prairies are slowly becoming depopulated. To be honest, they should never have been farmed -- not enough water, too much wind, too much drought. Each year more people leave, or die -- of old age, of loneliness. The young either flee or struggle to own more land, because it takes 3000 acres of wheat to survive. North Dakota has stabilized at around 600,000 people, because the big cities have new folk on their fringes.
I've been to South Dakota, and can report it is wild and beautiful, but distant, not a place for people who need a lot of people. North Dakota sounds like leaving the planet.
If not the return of the buffalo (and I eat buffalo, so could appreciate this irony) perhaps a huge wind farm will be born. I've heard the constant wind on the north Texas prairie, and it moans, it screams, it whispers outside your door. I have great admiration for those who fled Europe, looking for a new life. I hope they found some joy in the Dakotas, since their descendants have continued moving, looking for Home.
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/2008-01/emptied-north-dakota/bowden-text.html
The wallpaper of my journal echoes this article. The northern prairies are slowly becoming depopulated. To be honest, they should never have been farmed -- not enough water, too much wind, too much drought. Each year more people leave, or die -- of old age, of loneliness. The young either flee or struggle to own more land, because it takes 3000 acres of wheat to survive. North Dakota has stabilized at around 600,000 people, because the big cities have new folk on their fringes.
I've been to South Dakota, and can report it is wild and beautiful, but distant, not a place for people who need a lot of people. North Dakota sounds like leaving the planet.
If not the return of the buffalo (and I eat buffalo, so could appreciate this irony) perhaps a huge wind farm will be born. I've heard the constant wind on the north Texas prairie, and it moans, it screams, it whispers outside your door. I have great admiration for those who fled Europe, looking for a new life. I hope they found some joy in the Dakotas, since their descendants have continued moving, looking for Home.
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/2008-01/emptied-north-dakota/bowden-text.html
