ON THE WAY WEST TO FARGO, the land is wide, the sky big.
Fields and farm sites—punctuated by occasional cities, like Sauk Centre, Alexandria and Fergus Falls, and exits to small towns—once west of St. Cloud, define the Interstate 94 corridor leading northwest to the North Dakota border.
It is a place that can be both unsettling and freeing, depending on your perspective, your mood, your experiences.
Raised on the southwestern Minnesota prairie, even I am sometimes overwhelmed by the infinite spaciousness of this prairie, this sky.
I ground myself with my camera, locking on scenes that root me to the earth, give me the security of feeling tethered.
And when I do that, I notice the details of lines and shapes—in fence posts and grain bins, a lone farmhouse or a single tree, the angle of a barn roof or the vertical rise of a silo.
I still feel small in this expanse. But I, at least, feel less lost in the vastness.
Copyright 2013 Audrey Kletscher Helbling
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