Grama

To understand the exquisite beauty of simple green grass, you must travel through eight hundred miles of sage-brush and grama...the latter, a stunted species of herbage, growing in ash tinted spirals, only two inches from the ground, and giving the Plains an appearance of being matted with curled hair or gray corkscrews. Its other name is “buffalo grass”; and in spite of its dinginess, with the assistance of the sage, converting all the Plains west of Fort Kearney into a model Quaker landscape, it is one of the most nutritious varieties of cattle fodder, and for hundreds of miles the emigrant drover’s only dependence.

Every few years, Ingrid goes back to take a look, even though all that’s left is the old bleached shell of a house, surrounded by blue grama grass and tall trees with pale bark and waxy leaves.

The grass was thick around us, grama and bluestem, more than could ever be eaten.