This photo shows, the flatness of the South Dakota Prairie, about which, ZMM author Robert Pirsig writes:

“This is grassland now. We are on the prairie. .. I have a feeling none of us fully understands what four days on this prairie in July will be like. Memories of car trips across them are always of flatness and great emptiness as far as you can see, extreme monotony and boredom as you drive for hour after hour, getting nowhere, wondering how long this is going to last without a turn in the road, without a change in the land going on and on to the horizon. .. In my mind, when I look at these fields, I say to her, "See? . . . See?" and I think she does. I hope later she will see and feel a thing about these prairies I have given up talking to others about; a thing that exists here because everything else does not and can be noticed because other things are absent. She seems so depressed sometimes by the monotony and boredom of her city life, I thought maybe in this endless grass and wind she would see a thing that sometimes comes when monotony and boredom are accepted. It’s here, but I have no names for it.” (From ZMM Ch 2, page 17)

This photo is placed here to illustrate what it was like for me on my “Big (Intercity) Bus Trip, from Aiken SC, To Bozeman MT and return”. Although taken some 12 days, after I got on the Greyhound Bus in Aiken SC. This is the only photo I happen to have, with which to illustrates what I saw for some aggregate of 8 days-worth of hours on the bus!!

My Palm Centro Cell camera, recorded that this photo was taken 12/02/2012 at 3:43 PM local time. From the date (same as file number below = mmddyy), I deduce this photo was taken about half way from Oacoma SD & Rapid City SD.

Thus, this is indeed "The Grasslands", otherwise known as "The Prairie"!!


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