Big Sky Country

Montana may have claimed the tagline, but here on the plains we all reside in Big Sky Country, where the dome of heaven tethers itself to a 360-degree horizon line and becomes a part of the landscape.

The sky fills our collective vision. It’s the first place a farmer’s eyes turn every morning. It dictates our moods. It even crowds our social media feeds, where photos of sunsets have been known to outnumber cat memes.      

Our outlook, our sense of belonging, our bond with a particular way of life, all derive in part from our physical environment. It’s a phenomenon analyzed by sociologists, psychologists and anthropologists, and intuited by poets, painters and novelists.

For me, oatmeal-colored cinderblock walls evoke memories of No. 2 pencils and filling in standardized test bubbles. Cotton-ball summer clouds evoke memories of long novels and reading away the time on lazy afternoons, my back propped against a Chinese elm. Both environments shaped my thinking, but the prairie sky became the open book most often referenced by the community around me.

On the plains, I could watch the weather approaching from any direction. The first time I walked through a downtown defined by a true skyline, I relished the experience but felt strangely disoriented.

“How can you tell what the weather’s doing when you can’t see the sky?” I asked my friend.

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