Comedown

North Platte, Nebraska

Wednesday, May 5, 2010

This morning as I drove north out of Moab, Utah I was convinced that I was in the midst of the most beautiful mountain scenery I was likely to see on this trip. But as I hopped on the interstate and headed east into Colorado it was obvious that the Kodak moments weren't over. For this comparative flatlander it was hard to resist stopping every ten miles or so to take pictures, even when I realized that at some point all these photos were going to look pretty much alike.

Then I drove through Denver, and things began to change dramatically. Suddenly I wasn't in the Rocky Mountains any more. As they receded in my rear view mirror I was greeted by low hills and plowed fields and the overwhelming stench of manure. I'd gone from beauty to bullshit in a matter of a few miles. What a comedown, literally and figuratively. I thought about the hundreds of miles of driving I had ahead of me through terrain that was, if anything, even less attractive than this. My impulse was to turn around.

People don't write songs about Nebraska, nor should they. To tell you the truth, certain people shouldn't have written songs about the Rocky Mountains, either, but they did, and I guess their exuberance was understandable.

Now I'm in the middle of a state that has only one thing to distinguish it as far as I know. Well, two. The country's only unicameral legislature and a pretty damn good college football team. That just doesn't seem like enough.