The High Plains - country open to the wind and sun and snow, colonized by light and space. Drive west along I-90 (or better yet, some less-used highway) on an early June day, from western Minnesota across South Dakota and into eastern Wyoming: the sky clears, humidity drains from the air, trees retreat to sheltered coulees and swales. The beautiful spatials of earth and sky beckon, as do the paintings of Keith Jacobshagen ("In the Evening I Dreamed of Rain and Cicadas"), the novels of Willa Cather (Song of the Lark), the music of Pat Metheny ("The Fields, the Sky," "Beyond the Missouri Sky"), the essays of Merrill Gilfillan (Magpie Rising, Chokecherry Places), the poetry of B. H. Fairchild (Early Occult Memory Systems of the Lower Midwest), and the photographs of Don Kirby ("Commanche NGL, CO," "Fort Pierre NGL, SD"). I have driven across the High Plains forty times or more, and I have never tired of the space, the transition from the central Midwest to the landscapes "beyond the 100th meridian."