Prairie sunsets

By Audrey Kletscher Helbling

I miss the sunset. I live in the valley. But I am a prairie girl. Space wide open, land flat, sky endless, sunsets as gorgeous as you will ever see. That's the prairie. I don't see the sunset here, tucked at the bottom of a big hill in my Faribault home crowded by houses and trees. It's been that way since 1984, the year my husband and I moved from our rented lake cabin into this southeastern Minnesota city and this house.

We saw some lovely sunsets over the shimmering waters of Cannon Lake outside Faribault. But nothing beats a prairie sunset, that blazing ball of fire sinking below the horizon, oranges and reds and yellows flaming across the vast sky. That is western Minnesota. Those are the sunsets of my childhood, the sunsets I remember and the sunsets I miss.

Every so often, I travel to southwestern Minnesota and am treated to those spectacular sunsets. I savor them, just like I savor the beauty of the prairie, the place I once called home.