A beautiful New Years Day in the Wichitas
A sunny winter day, upon an open prairie, a beast from the past finds a nice bed of grass to rest upon and bathe in the afternoon sun. A reminder of how our government once placed a bounty on his kind to starve and freeze out the natives on the plains. Strength and good will always prevail.
A lonely mountain towers over a sea of prairie grass–grass that once fed millions of American Bison which in turned sustained the lives of people who lived in isolated settlements of the great frontier of the Unites States.
A tiny creature, the prairie dog, finds something tasty to munch on.
The western spirit is alive an well. Nothing illustrates freedom and opportunity as well as the long horned cattle that roamed free in Texas after the Civil War. Cattlemen and cowboys turned this opportunity into venture capital in rounding up these animals to drive hundreds of miles across lawless territory (now Oklahoma), past outlaws and restless natives, to wild cow towns in Kansas. As fences began to pop up along trails, the trails moved farther west. This heard grazes freely on land that lies between two of the greatest cattle trails of all time, the Chisholm and the Great Western, in southwest Oklahoma.
Growing close to the ground, all types of grasses and weeds become dried in the relentless wind that scours the great plains until the next rain or snow. When spring comes, they will green up and sprout new growth before the summer’s searing sun comes to scorch them. Such is the harshness of life on the southern great plains.
– by J.Wade Harrell,
author of Shadows of Siernod and Flames of Palamarr
J. Wade Harrell Fantasy World 