No trees

In the Steppes of Central Asia; Symphony No. 1 and 2; Alexander Borodin, composer; Royal Philharmonic Orchestra; Vladimir Ashkenazy, conducting

Victor Borge speaks: I’m going to play for you now a piece by a Danish composer … Mozart. Hans Christian Mozart. … Mozart was what we call a bust. He only went from [the chest] up. Yet, despite this physical handicap, scholars insist that Mozart was fairly happily married. But Mrs. Mozart wasn’t. She went all the way to the floor.

Do you know what I like best about the central region of the United States? When you finally emerge from the trees, gasping for air and dumbfounded at the scope and perspective of the terrain and topography in front of you, you can at long, long last see that the sky, in every direction, does, indeed, … go all the way to the horizon.

In the east, a sunset doesn’t exist. The star at the center of our solar system unceremoniously sneaks away from view over and above the ever-present copse of trees and shrubbery, rather than the dramatic “retirement of colors” behind the peripheral ambit, breadth and sweep of the earth itself. We’re lucky in Annapolis; we can see semblances of sunsets from the waters of the Chesapeake Bay and the Severn River. But even then, it’s still not the display of cosmic wonder and amazement that happens on the western horizon out in the wide, open and treeless prairie.

Prairie and plains are how we typically designate the lay of the land in Missouri, Iowa, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Kansas, Oklahoma, and all the way up to the foothills of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado, Wyoming and Montana. When we hear the word “steppe”, we tend to think of something Russian or Ukrainian. But, really, the definition for “steppe” doesn’t differ very much at all from “prairie” and “plains”: an extensive plain, especially one without trees.

You could easily find a scene like this anywhere in the states that I mentioned above. This bare scene might be a bit of a stretch for a steppe … but I don’t see any trees.

I find panoramas like these extremely powerful. Grass and sky – nothing else. For hundreds of miles. The different ways that people respond and react to the spread of such landscape varies widely. And I would agree with some of the descriptions that many may offer. Stark? Oh, yes. Very stark. Barren? Mm-hmm. You’re right on the money there. Harsh? Probably. Austere? Good word, y’all. Yup, austere. Somber? I’ll accept a little somber there, just because I tend to be a little melancholy, myself. Desolate, bleak, Godforsaken, cheerless, grim, dismal? No, no, nope, try a little riddlin, nada, aaaaaand … no.

Some people have lived behind trees for so long that they would immediately feel the need to duck and cover if they encountered land like this first hand. I suppose I’m used to it. Although, I grew up in a farm community. The pioneers who broke ground out in God’s country knew to surround their homes and acreages with trees for protection during blizzards and wind storms. But the further west you go, the sparer the range.

During my vacation, Mom and I drove to the state capital of Pierre, South Dakota. We took a road that neither of us had taken before. Several times during our journey, we would crawl over a hill only to find a purview completely devoid of trees and buildings. Just an open road before us that disappeared into infinity.

“In the Steppes of Central Asia”, by Russian composer Alexander Borodin, perhaps isn’t so vacant of friend and unvarnished feature. He portrays a caravan of Asians crossing the expanse under the protection of Russian troops. Two exotic and ethnic melodies provide a “traveling” theme that represent plodding hooves of horses and camels along the Silk Road to the Orient.

In one of the Peanuts comic strips, Linus tells Charlie Brown about a claim that he once heard his grandfather allege. With Snoopy and Woodstock standing nearby during his retelling of his grandfather’s story, Linus says, “When the first Europeans came to the New World, a squirrel could run through the top of the trees from the coast of the Atlantic Ocean to the banks of the Mississippi River.” Snoopy and Woodstock look at each other, shrug, then leap from tree to tree for a few yards. Then – Bonk! – they land on their heads. And the thought balloon above Snoopy’s head says, “Either the old man was telling the truth – or that was some squirrel.”

Credits: To Hans Christian Mozart. Yeah, right. Now there would have been a great Dane.

This is the thirteenth of my final forty-five CD's.