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DURING MY FIRST HOUR
on the Dakota grasslands
it was dark and cold and the walls of my tent
were puffing, the top lifting. Waves of drizzle
spattered against the nylon. I was sitting
inside, legs crossed, hands clutching both
drapes of the tent flap, peering out of the
mosquito netting. Out there, I reminded myself, is
buffalo Gap National Grassland, nearly six hundred
thousand acres of mixed-grass prairie. But I could see
nothing through the dark and the mist, not one blade of grass,
not one star. In an effort to "feel" the open space, to absorb
its character, its magnitude, I closed my eyes. I wanted something special
to make this as an arrival, something spiritual, mystical —
God.
Reprinted with permission
from Not Just Any Land
Copyright © 2004
by John T Price
U of Nebraska P
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PUT THE BABY BIRD DOWN, the patrol boy
says. It's momma is coming back and it'll give
you lice.
I tell him I don'[t care about lice and that I'm
going to take the bird to my own momma, but is he in the mood to listen?
No. He's in the fifth grade and thinks that wearing a badge
and holding a sharp-edged stop sign the size of a pizza dish gives
him the power to decide life and death. Another time he might
be right, but on this particular spring day, this particular baby
bird needs my help #&151; I spotted it in the new wet
grass, shivering, on its side, its leg sticking straight out the way they do when
things aren't right. Now it's cupped in my hands, a soft freckled
ball, and I think it isn't shivering so much as
before.
Reprinted with permission
from Man Killed by Pheasant
Copyright © 2008
by John T Price
Da Capo/Perseus
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Bibliography
