Five Views of the Wilcox Prairie

Fools have said that the Prairies are boring. This cannot be true, because in the absence of hills and trees there’s more distance in each direction you might look. Also, Prairie landscapes include the skies above them which, whether blue, star-spangled, or cloudy, aren’t boring. Herewith photoevidence from the vicinity of Wilcox, Saskatchewan, with which I claim no other connection.

The nearby highway is distinguished by an adjacent railway line that carries really big trains; you really don’t want to be waiting on a crossing while one of them spends tens of minutes reversing back and forth lackadaisically, to what purpose I can’t imagine.

See what I said about the sky not being boring?

This corner of Saskatchewan has less absence of human construction than Prairie-typical. Below, four distinct structures rise from the fields, marked by the clusters of trees which surround every locus of human activity here, there to offer shelter from the endless Prairie wind.

I was out for a drive with my mother, now 96. She asked “How many people wonder what it looks like where the makings of the bread on their table come from?” Below, what it looks like after the harvest. The ground’s less pretty than before the wheat was cut but the dirt/cloud antiphony lured my camera out of the bag.

Prairie photography is right up there with Rock-Concert photography in that there’s all the light and visual drama you could want, just get in a good place and point the camera in a good direction.

Remove distractions, highlight the clouds, and you can’t go wrong.

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