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I’ve done a lot of driving recently. Well for some of it I wasn’t driving. I was just a passenger. Either way, I have spent a lot of time out on stretches of the flattest, baldest prairie that you could imaging. Just endless miles of unpopulated farmland stretching out to the horizon. Here’s the thing though. That might seem terribly boring, but it really isn’t. I really do live in a very beautiful part of the planet. We watched the sun set multiple times over the last couple of weeks. Not just the twenty minutes or so that the sky turns red orange. The entire sunset, from wickedly bright afternoon to complete darkness. And out on the empty prairie, complete darkness can be pretty damned complete. We stopped to watch the northern lights dancing behind thin clouds. I looked up at the night sky and saw the sweeping arc of our galaxy. I watched dust clouds kicked up by combines finishing the harvest drift across the road in front of me. I drove past golden fields of barley that hadn’t yet been cut. All of that is incredibly beautiful. I used to think that where I grew up and lived was dull. Generic. But it was only generic to me, because that is where I live. I think a lot of people would think that the idea of driving for several hours without passing even a small town might sound boring. Like there is nothing worth looking at out there. That’s just not true. Where I live is amazing. It’s nice to remember that sometimes.