"our limits transgressed"

This week I started re-reading the book, Dakota, by Kathleen Norris. 

I had been thoroughly digesting the content and beauty of Norris' way with words when I had to return Dakota to the library.  After this happened several times, my husband found one for me on ebay - but, being one of many books on my shelf waiting to be read it took me awhile to get back to it.  

Not remembering where I left off, I decided to begin again and was reminded of the reason I love the way Kathleen Norris writes.  And, how very apt the first words were as we traveled the prairies and experienced "beauty beyond man's ability to create."

"The High Plains, the beginning of the desert West, often act as a crucible for those who inhabit them.  Like Jacob's angel, the region requires that you wrestle with it before it bestows a blessing.  This can mean driving through a snowstorm on icy roads, wondering whether you'll have to pull over and spend the night in your car, only to emerge under tag ends of clouds into a clear sky blazing with stars.  Suddenly you know what you're seeing:  the earth has turned to face the center of the galaxy, and many more stars are visible than the ones we usually see on our wing of the spiral...

Or a vivid double rainbow marches to the east, following the wild summer storm that nearly blew you off the road.  The storm sky is gunmetal gray, but to the west the sky is peach streaked with crimson.  The land and sky of the West often fill what Thoreau termed our "need to witness our limits transgressed."  Nature, in Dakota, can indeed be an experience of the holy."

And so begins a poet's rendering of the life and love of a prairie habitation...