Somewhere in the middle of a plateau of snow and wheat, stands an old school. For thirty years or more, I have stopped each time I came by and photographed the graffiti on the walls, watched the deterioration of the building, and wondered where our sense of history went. I have never had a clearer image of what childhood out here was like for the early settlers, than to read on the wall that a teacher had molested a student in the closet. Look out these windows, nothing but an expense of white in winter, an empty landscape where horizontal takes on a whole new dimension.
Then what would a student do? And with bitter cold, and a wood heater, a mix of all ages, no doubt...the one room school. No book could have given me an instant sense of the karma and character bred under these wheat land, remote landscapes where blizzards and snowdrifts divided these people from the rest of us in winter.
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