@coruscanttojerusalem this. this is it.
“Sky too big” also gets you on the tops of very tall, sharp mountains, where standing at the top means everything around you except the snow under your feet is blue sky.
Y’all’re joking, but I remember the agoraphobia I had the very first time I spent time in prairie states. There was this terror inside of nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. It went away when I flew back to the East coast.
It was there the 2nd time too, but not quite as strongly.
Even TALKING about it now makes me feel anxious.
Laugh all you want, but when you’re used to driving a few hours and hitting ocean, and an hour and hitting mountains, being surrounded by nothing but flat and Flat and FLAT and knowing that’s all there is for hundreds of miles does things to ya.
Not even slightly joking, though. Flat places give me the horrors. At least when you go up a mountain, you went to see the sky void, and you can hike right back down and hide from it in a nice valley somewhere. Safe little critter under the nice tall trees.
Out in the Flat Places* there’s nowhere to goddam hide from the sky. It’s all nothingness from horizon to horizon, and that nothingness wants to grind you under its boot like an ant, I swear to god.
*Flat Places may vary person by person, but I absolutely am including low hill country because I think it makes it worse. You look at the hills and expect to see mountains but none appears!
I don't know how you cannot love this view.
Donbas steppe
Truly, at no point would I ever say that such a landscape is not beautiful. I’m not dead to the poetry of these scenes.
But, simultaneously (and that’s the crazy part), the sky triggers my threat response.
And I know friends from plains/field/steppe-country who find it stressful to have mountains “looming” over them (their words, never mine).
Them: comforting wide horizons, I could see any threat coming. Me: I am exposed, I will fall into the sky :(
Me: comforting mountains, sheltering me in the valley. Them: these big rocks will fall on me :(
Large Bird Will Get You
As a child of the misty forest, this open place above is terrifying. (I felt afraid all the way through Kansas). But then, a lot of folks fear them the misty forest. Especially at night.
Photo by Ansel Adams
Photo by Nick Strait
For context: I'm from Scotland, and my spouse @mothman-etd is from Minnesota. I grew up surrounded by forests and hills as far as the eye can see.
When we first started dating, I'd usually only travel to see him in the Twin Cities, except one time, one of his coworkers was getting married up in North Dakota, so we made it into a road trip.
I fell asleep in the car like a true passenger princess and woke up to nothing but flatness, but not just any flatness, no. It had been raining, and the plains were filled with water, so for all intents and purposes, it was like waking up in the middle of the fucking ocean with nothing but too much sky above me and absolutely nothing around us but the endless stretch of water and the empty road in front of us.
When I tell you the primal fear that went through me. It was like falling upwards. It was like gravity just didn't exist, and there was no limit to how high my panic could rise. I had to do that stretch of the journey with my chair tipped back so I couldn't see the emptiness. Like a blinkered horse ready to bolt and break all my legs at once in a frenzied panic to escape the Nothingness.
Eventually, we pulled over at a service station, and I can honestly say I've never been so happy to see a roadside Subway in all my life.
To add on to @thebibliosphere story, while it was raining it was also flood season. So Joy woke up to this:
All of North Dakota is the same elevation, so nothing stops the flood water. The interstate roads are built just high enough so you can still drive on them so it really looks like you are driving in the ocean when it happens. But not the normal ocean, a still, no waves, quiet ocean with random patches of trees sticking up.
Another fun tibit about this flood season is the Red River, which is the primary source of this flooding, flows north. So as the winter turns to spring the south part thaws first and smashes right into the still frozen part. Basically it's like turning on your kitchen faucet directly onto the counter instead of the sink.
It sure is an Experience 🥲
I am from the big flatness and I love the big flatness.
