Austere Beauty © 2010 Bo Mackison
Taking photographs in the tallgrass prairie, I lose my way.
No path survives for long in the thicknesses of these stalks — Big Bluestem, Little Bluestem, Indiangrass.
Stop. Listen. Look.
Take a few deep breaths and I push my way west, through the dry grasses, towards the glare of the sun.
Prairie flowers, their skeletons, some are standing erect, waving in the late autumn breezes. Some are bent in an arc. Some stems poke sharply, broken in half by the unrelenting winds.
All are in waiting.
Waiting to take cover under the flurries of an early snow. Dried flowers linger on the tallest of stems, aglow, back lit by the setting sun.
Austere beauty.
