The View from the Roof
Up on the roof, I stood, stretched, and surveyed the earth around me, a vast sea of prairie grass spreading out in all directions. I could see that the land wasn't really flat at all, as I had expected, but consisted of ebbing and flowing hills. That way ran a river, for there was a deeper crack between the hills with a few scrubby trees jutting up. And over there were some roads, splicing through the hills as straight as the edge of a 2x4, leading off the reservation in four directions, towards Rapid City, Pierre, North Dakota, Wyoming. Yet for all this expanse, which could lead one to ponder a lonely existence, a remarkably communal feeling began to spread through me.