Kansas is hard. When you are driving towards the mountains watching the sun rise over the plains it is beautiful in its simplicity and traversing the prairie seems like an adventure.       Driving through Denver during rush hour traffic with the mountains in your rear view however, is a different story. The immensity of Kansas can feel tenfold when you are headed eastbound and have gotten a late start. The reality of returning to daily life weighs heavily.
Kansas represents the desert between the life I want to lead and the one I must claim.
It is that space of nothingness in between that offers only solitude and emptiness. I ask questions seeking answers but my voice disappears in the wind, drifting for miles across the great expanse. I used to be afraid of this silence, of the unknown territory stretching before me, but now there is a certain comfort in this uncharted path I have begun to tread. It is the stripping bare of the unnecessary, the frivolous and the putting aside of others’ expectations. This stillness, this chasm between the familiar and new potential is mine only. With that awareness comes freedom. And the grass waves in reply to the whisper of the wind.