Utfv RTBarnes, Hholo Researchers 
waves of an agitated ocean.” Others 
were more poetic. Thomas Farnham 
called the Plains “vast savannahs, re- 
sembling molten seas of emerald spark- 
ling with flowers, arrested while stormy 
and heaving, and fixed in eternal re- 
pose.” Adopting a more tragic perspec- 
tive, Abbe Emmanuel H. Domenech 
wrote, in 1860, that the grasslands of 
west Texas were “like an ocean of dark 
stunted herbs, in which not a single bush 
or bramble obstructed the view, where 
nothing marked a beginning or an end, 
and where all was mute and motion- 
less.” Some, like the young American 
Brackenridge, found the ocean compari- 
son inadequate. “If the vast expanse of 
the ocean is considered a sublime spec- 
tacle,” he wrote of the central plains in 
1811, “this is even more so; for the eye 
has still greater scope.” Or, as Hamlin 
Garland would put it decades later, “my 
eyes/Fasten on more of earth and air/ 
Than seashores furnish anywhere.” 
Those to whom the vast open space 
was not oppressive found it, as I did, 
exhilarating. “The nerves stiffen, the 
senses expand, and man begins to real- 
ize the magnificence of being,” wrote 
Colonel Dodge, once he’d recovered 
from his seasickness. Brackenridge, who 
had stepped out onto the Plains from a 
riverboat on the Missouri, wrote: “In- 
stead of being closed up in a moving 
prison, deprived of the use of our limbs, 
here we rday wander at will. The mind 
naturally expands, or contracts, to suit 
the sphere in which it exists — in the 
immeasurable immensity of the scene, 
the intellectual faculties are endued 
with an energy, a vigor, a spring, not to 
be described.” 
Exhilaration, however, could tip 
Above: Rabbit is obscured by grass. 
Right: Road divides plowed fields. 
quickly into terror, and often did, par- 
ticularly when unprepared travelers first 
met the Great Plains thunderbird, that 
spectacular mythological creature that 
flies through the air with its eyes closed, 
its gigantic wings flapping out “peals of 
thunder which seemed to shake the 
earth to its center,” thunder that visibly 
enraged the buffalo bulls that pawed the 
earth and bellowed as the big bird rum- 
bled overhead. When the thunderbird 
blinked, the Indians said, great spears of 
sprangling lightning would flash out of 
its open eyes, leaving the pack animals 
to huddle abjectly together, heads 
drooping and limbs stilled, while 
humans trembled for their lives. 
The Great Plains is justifiably famous 
for its violent thunderstorms, one of the 
more dramatic aspects of the region’s 
changeable, highly versatile weather. 
The storms, typically of short duration, 
often produce downpours of three to six 
inches or more. The rain tends to be 
local, drenching the earth in one spot 
while the surrounding area remains dry. 
Most thunderstorms are caused when 
two of the region’s three major air 
masses collide, when the cold dry air 
from Canada strikes either warm, mois- 
ture-laden air masses from the Gulf of 
Mexico or air that has swept across the 
Rocky Mountains, Pacific air masses 
that range from warm to cold, moist to 
dry. Most rain falls from April to July, 
with storms reaching their maximum in 
May or June, the months when most 
early travelers began their long treks 
into, or across, the Plains. As a result, 
early journals abound with tales of trav- 
elers drenched to their skins, spending 
cold, sleepless, wet nights, unable to find 
a bit of dry bedding or clothing among 
all their gear. Along the Platte River, 
famous for drawing thunderstorms, emi- 
grants reported almost daily downpours 
in the spring of 1839. 
Anyone who has seen a Great Plains 
thunderstorm in its full splendor knows 
that its most spectacular feature, the 
thing that distinguishes it most clearly 
from an equally violent downpour in the 
city, is that the storm can be seen com- 
ing from miles away. Indeed, the Plains 
area is so large that a storm, from a 
distance, can be perceived as a single 
entity, its black clouds churning, its 
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