Whoa. At least they have the interstate nearby. I’ve been working in Watford City North Dakota for the last year and a half. Talk about desolate. The closest City is Williston, ND which is an hour away and Williston is about another hour and a half from just the interstate lol.
I remember flying into DEN for the first time. It was scary.
I just remember seeing that flat prairie gradually make its way closer to the airplane as it descended. If you didn't know any better, you would think that the plane is going to crash and the pilot just didn't tell anyone.
Only at the last few seconds do you see the lights, perimiter fence, and other airport equipment appear as your plane lands safely.
I’m originally from a really flat part of Ohio, but the flatness and openness of SD was extremely unsettling to me when I passed through on my way to move out west. It felt like reverse claustrophobia.
Opposite here — grew up on the front range of CO and I feel uncomfortable when I can’t see the horizon. I live in N Idaho now (which is still part of this circle but mountainous and forested) and still don’t really love being amongst all the trees.
I moved from Denver to Orlando. Every time I go back to Colorado, I’m amazed at just how far I can see. In Florida, there’s almost never a time when the line of sight exceeds half a mile unless you’re at the beach.
I grew up in Aurora and have since moved east. When I’ve been to the Pacific Northwest, I always feel too crowded by the trees, but I also don’t love the dry and featureless prairie as much either. Texas has been the best compromise so far between big trees and water while also still enjoying wide open spaces, and where I live now (Kentucky) is also pretty good for this, with the bonus of actually having 4 seasons.
I feel that. I live in the forest but close to the prairie (Minnesota). It is a very dramatic difference and there isn't that much of a gradient. The open spaces have grown on me though. If it wasn't for the wind, maybe I'd live there.
One funny thing is that people from the prairie are often very concerned about trees being too close to the house and falling in it. And they'll tell you if your trees are making them uncomfortable.
It's funny this isn't the first time hearing someone describe the flatness of some areas as being unsettling. As someone who grew up in a really flat part of the country it is the opposite for me. When I travel to a really mountainous or even just really hilly big tree area I get a sense of claustrophobia. There is something unsettling about not being able to see for miles, like I'm trapped in. It's not debilitating or anything and I get over it pretty quickly but it's still there.
Yep, that and first time out on the plains are when people realize they have it. There's a related ocean-based phobias thalassophobia (large bodies of water in general) and bathophobia (deep water specifically) but that's more about what's below you than around.
As a child growing up in South Dakota, I always remember riding in the car in the dark and seeing the lights of houses so far away that they looked like little boats on the ocean. It always gave me the creeps. I still get creeped out driving across the prairie, it's so desolate. Even in the daytime it's just vast and ugly (most of the year) and it's completely infested with billboards.
My father-in-law had to show some Japanese businessmen some of the land that being used to farm products they were purchasing in western ND. I guess the view of the open sky and flat plains were too much for one guy who refused to get off the private jet b/c he had always seen buildings or mountains back home. It was too overwhelming for him.
Dang, I might have to check out the Dakota’s because allergies get worse every year here. In Houston, We got the trees, grass, mold, chemical plants and refineries AND humidity on top of that. I’ve never been that far north tho, might have to check it out. Probably not built for that cold lol
There’s some, but they’re either windbreaks planted by farmers or they come in ones and twos. A few hundred years ago the great plains were literally just hundreds of thousands of square miles of tall grass.
We have shelter belts now because of FDRs work programs, a few pines, a few old growth trees, but the prairie is vast open space that’s why Chicago is the Windy City a good gust can pick up speed because there’s nothing impeding it. That’s why the dust bowl was so rough because loose dirt and sand got blown around and could blind you if a particle did enough damage to your eyes.
Yep, pretty bleak. Awful place to live. During the day, I'd drive for hours just looking at that. During night, I'd imagine that I was driving past mountains, lakes, trees, etc.
The whole area should have no daytime speed limits on the interstate highways. A friend who grew up in Nebraska said everything was a 4 hour drive away.
I am speaking on behalf of Canadas grasslands/great plain is one of the most endangered ecosystems in the world.
American Serengeti by Dan Flores goes into great depth about what used to be one of the greatest landscapes in the world. Almost all the flora and fauna has been wiped out or depleted to endangered status to make way for farming.
One of my favourite things to do in the summer is drive around east/southeast alberta and look for the ungrazed pastures, and if I'm lucky I'll find some heritage rangeland or protected areas.
Hahah yup, the Cypress Hill are quite a beautiful area. If you head over to the Sask side you can check out the Grasslands National Park. Other then that you might find a quarter or two of ducks unlimited, wildlife lands or wildlife habitat lands. They allow grazing in some of those lands though lol
With the aquifers drying out, maybe someday in a few decades we can set aside at least ten million acres for conservation, cut down the fences, replant native grasses and get the buffalo migrating again.
The vast majority of the US prairies/Plains is untouched. There is a bit of farming, but in places like Wyoming, eastern Colorado central SD, Montana, etc. (most of that circle$, it’s less than half, maybe even 20% or less that is farmed in many places.
When Europeans first encountered it, the American great plains were some of the most fertile grain growing lands on earth. The many feet deep top soil facilitated insane grain and legume production as well as robust livestock development.
Since then, industrial ag production has decimated the local soil systems.
Basically, fertility that hadn't been encountered since the dawn of agriculture drew people in 2 centuries ago. Now those areas have been pretty well decimated to the point that they are comparable with other global grassland ecosystems
This is a valid point. It's one of the concerns I have as a farmer. That you can inadvertently select for plant varieties and soil organisms that are less nitrogen efficient, because they are getting it provided to them.
But there also have always been inputs. They just changed over time. The Midwest traditionally had a much more varied cropping system, so their inputs were manure and a nitrogen fixing crop or crops.
So when one measures corn yield it would have to take that into account - those rotations were the input, and they had a cost and footprint associated as well. Also, if those rotations pushed your Corn Harvest to every other year then the total yield would be divided by two, making it even worse.
So while the systems have definitely changed, the larger part of the yield increase I would argue comes from synthetic fertilizer Plus simply genetic improvements in breeding varieties.
The effort that goes into plant breeding for staple crops around the world is massive, and it yields steady returns each decade.
The soil was so productive that good soil care techniques (composting, crop rotation etc..) were deemed unnecessary. The Dust Bowl and the depleted soil forced people west.
This is quite false. Yields for corn and soybeans in eastern South Dakota where I farmed are much higher today than they were 30 years ago. Modern no till practices conserve soil and moisture, and planting populations have steadily increased. Climate change has actually benefited the area (so far), as the growing season is now about a month longer than it was in 1980.
You're comparing contemporary results, after decades of soil conservation practices being recognized and then widely implemented (like the "modern no till" that you mention) as well as utilizing modern breeding and synthetic fertilizer technology, with the transition between historical prairie ecosystems and annual grain cropping in the early 1800s.
As a Pacific Northwesterner, when I visited the Kansas City area it almost made me queasy looking at the horizons and not seeing foothills, mountains, or water. I really did not expect how disorienting it was going to feel. I mean I didn't expect it to feel like anything. But all of a sudden it was like vertigo, or like I could fall off the earth into the sky. I didn't realize how much of my life was constantly in a valley or on a hill next to a valley.
My mother has this problem, she complains when there's 'too much sky' due to unbroken flat terrain. This place would be her personal hell. WAY too much sky.
Same. Grew up in the Appalachians and lived there my whole life until I joined the military. So far Texas, and South Carolina have been an incredibly strange feeling.
This reminds me of The Expanse books, where the people from Mars will freak out being on Earth and the Belters would absolutely lose their shit if they ever came to Earth and saw an open sky.
I have never experienced such openness before, I wonder if I would have a similar reaction.
I had an opposite experience before being in a deep forest. I was laying on a bench looking up at the tall trees surrounding me, not much sky visible. It felt like I was enveloped or cradled by the earth, it was a very calming and natural feeling. The wind would blow and it sounded like the ocean in the trees, it felt like the earth was breathing.
I’m from Seattle and my friend lives in Southern Alberta. We drove from her town to Calgary, basically 2 hours on flat ground with NOTHING else in sight. It was wild and I couldn’t do it. Felt much better once we went up north to Banff.
A friend of mine had the same reaction when they visited me in North Dakota! (They grew up in Utah and have only lived in mountain areas) They mentioned that it felt like being in the middle of the ocean with how disorienting it is.
For me it’s the opposite, if I’m in a large city I get almost claustrophobic by being surrounded by buildings. I will never visit NYC again for that reason, thought it was a super cool place and loved the Broadway shows, but it made me feel way too uncomfortable.
And I experienced the opposite moving from Texas to the PNW. It’s was oddly disconcerting NOT seeing the horizon all the time.
I’m getting used to it now and I can see how the closeness of the trees can be insulating in a way. But occasionally I need some wide open spaces, and I can take a jaunt over the Cascades and get some breathing room.
East coast where I grew up has a lotta visual clutter too. Driving around Wyoming had to at effect for me.
I understand “Big Sky” now like it just looks .. bigger .. I’d love to go to badlands and in the leadup to it drive around somewhere thats totally flat for miles.
I live in Alaska currently and I find real mountains to be a little claustrophobic haha. I think I’m finding east coast scenery was my happy medium.
Meanwhile I have the opposite problem. Lived on the prairies my whole life and then I went to university in Montreal for 2 years. Don’t get me wrong, Montreal is beautiful. But living downtown surrounded by skyscrapers made me feel sooooo claustrophobic and trapped. I used to take the metro to the very end of the line just so I could stand in a Walmart parking lot to see the sky and not have tall buildings right around me. lol
Lol I had a different reaction moving from Midwest (including KC area) and eventually ending up in the PNW. My reaction was mostly "there's so much green!"
I trained in Calgary and one of my instructors took me to a neighboring town. On the very open road I commented that I could see the curvature of the Earth. He was not impressed.
haha finally someone puts it into words…I get nauseous even laying on a blanket and looking straight up at the sky for too long. wide open flat spaces are disorienting. there’s gotta be a term for this!
It really is neat how many people have said that (and who have had a similar feeling to me). It's a reminder that we as people aren't just naturally cut out for one type of home. We can make many places feel safe and homey.
Nebraska isn't as flat as one would think unless you are traveling the Platte River valley along I-80 and I'd wager Omaha is as hilly if not even more hilly than KC too.
Yeah in the context of the sub it does seem like they’re more interested in the creepy / scary aspect. But I don’t think it necessarily has to be like that to be “liminal.”
Agreed. Liminal spaces are more about taking something familiar and sticking it in a different context, it makes our brains go "wait this isn't how I usually experience this, what's going on??"
A great example is visiting a familiar chain like McDonald's when you're in a different city. They usually look nearly identical inside despite being in a different location. For a little bit, your brain expects to walk outside into your usual city and not the new one. Hope this helps!
Because cities require water. Virtually zero major cities were just plucked down on a flat piece of land.
Virtually every city in the world is at some kind of water feature, geographic, landmark, crossing point of travel, or trade routes, coastline, or something else.
There is just no reason to walk across an empty plane like that and suddenly say “I want to put a city here.“
That is why there are very few cities on the plains.
There are a bunch of small towns that were originally set up as trading posts for travelers, or stopping points for the old-fashioned railroads that needed water every hundred miles or so, but those never grew beyond a few dozen people in most cases. The largest of them are places like Grand Island, Nebraska, which might have something like 10,000 people, but even that one is on a river.
It’s not just water but all kinds of resources including biological ones. That part of the world is just generally inhospitable to life. All kinds of life. The biodiversity of the United States falls off a cliff the further west of the Mississippi you go until you get to the west coast. Not just animals, but plants too. There can be a ton of trees, but not many different kinds of them. And they don’t support that many different animals.
This is an issue noticed in the very earliest explorations of the continental US and was a problem early on. Life is harder out west and so there is generally less life around because of that.
It looks like that in Canada, too, but that didn't stop five cities of >250k (Edmonton, Calgary, Saskatoon, Regina, Winnipeg) from developing, three of which are over 800k and two over 1.1M.
I have some relatives who live in the plains area of Montana. You could drop 10 more pins on random locations in that area and you would get almost the same view every time.
looks like a perfect place for solar/wind farm. No need to compete land with farm/wild life.
If only there is a cheap way to transport power out of there.
I'm from Sweden, opened google maps to see if an area this large could really contain that much "empty" land. Zoomed in on some random spot and found something called "Swedes forest township cemetery" 😅
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Literally opened up google maps on a completely random part of that region. Its because 90% of it looks like this.
https://preview.redd.it/ruf67n2drb4e1.png?width=1790&format=png&auto=webp&s=8436cc7f528a15cd1ff75c0d0adc96b3545eb61c