To confront the Divide—a swath of land from the Little Blue to the Republican River in Nebraska—was to feel such a pang of disorientation. But in a short amount of time, the country began to work on Cather. “I was little and homesick and lonely…” she later observed. “So the country and I had it out together and by the end of the first autumn the shaggy grass country had gripped me with a passion that I have never been able to shake. It has been the happiness and curse of my life.”
It helped to be young, for farming in Nebraska was backbreaking work, and subject to drought, tornadoes, even plagues of grasshoppers. It was a day’s journey by horse for many settlers to get to and from Red Cloud. Come winter, the snow drifted, collecting in the draws so deeply that you could permanently ruin a horse by riding it to town. Blizzards dropped so much snow that it was necessary to tunnel from the main house to the barn. Then the Divide was white against a gray sky as far as the eye could see.
