Cloud Vision

This writer sits in economy class, staring out a window, unaware of an upcoming vision. The engine rumbles to life as the metal beast turns upon the runway. From halt to a breakneck rush, it is a shallow incline up. Mechanized bone and sinew carry this writer in its belly. Lifting slates, exposing windows, one sees the beast’s wing, made with rivets and soldered pieces. Further beyond, the cityscape and the prairie occupy the horizon line. I gaze out and ponder for a time, and the epiphany hits. 

Creation and destruction compete and cooperate. As the beast flies up, the white cotton can not obscure the native grassland of the prairie broken by the cityscape. Trees foreign to the region accompany houses like a bulbous zit on the planet’s skin. The dead flat of the parking lots is a morbid copy of green prairie. The river by the city is darker than up or downstream. Surrounding the tiny city was farm after farm: orderly green, yellow and brown squares, rectangles, biological factorization. Blackened strips with dirt and dung mark the cattle feedlots. However, the city oozing outwards with the agricultural scars are but speckles. Beyond the roads was the prairie grasslands. Unruly peach fuzz on the skin of the planet rippling and waving in the wind. Every shade of green danced in place in the outdoor club beyond the horizon. Most end their vision here with romantic idealization. 

Beyond trivial justification, there is far more in contemplation. Amidst the prairie are dead blotches where nothing lives or grows like an infected wart. In the city are bits and patches of natural and artificial. Some parks are prim and proper madams, well cut with all the right curves. Other nature walks are rough and gruff men, a patchwork of native plants, and rambling walkways. Even the plains and city edges are distinctly blurred with the metropolis, trimming the prairie border. In cracks and fragments, the grassland encroaches on the farmland. Houses and businesses on the outskirts are constantly hacking back the ever-encroaching wilderness. Even as people tear up the sodden ground, grasses find new homes between the cracks in civilization. As the landscape freckled with cities, the cities freckled with the native wild grasses. Careful vision shows the reality and reveals an epiphany. 

On the edges, amidst the in-between, a new ecosystem is born. Amidst the destruction is a new creation. Broken blacktop and concrete offer sparse areas for weeds and lawn grasses. Prairie plants that do not compete well thrive in the cracks. Small metal beasts drive along gravel and move people around. Smaller critters that can not make it in the city center call the outskirts home. Feathered critters call the in-between a paradise because it’s too rough for most others. Big flying metal beasts take people to the sky across the continent. The new ecosystem comes with new possibilities for nature and people. All this the writer realizes before rising even higher. Clouds obscure the vision all the way to the horizon line. Upon the white canvas neverending, the epiphany within the vision ends. The cloud vision is complete. 

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Harvard Formatted References: 

Candeias, M., 2021. In Defense Of Plants. [online] In Defense of Plants. Available at: <https://www.indefenseofplants.com/>.

Johnson, J.R. and Larson, G.E., 2007. Grassland plants of South Dakota and the Northern Great Plains.

Leendertz, L., 2011. Twilight garden. Chicago, Ill.: Ball Publishing.

Molles, M., 2015. Ecology: concepts and applications. McGraw-Hill Education.

Simpson, B.B. and Conner-Ogorzaly, M., 2013. Plants in Our World: Economic Botany. McGraw-Hill Education.