What the Prairie Teaches Me About “Enough”

When I step onto the prairie, the very first thing I notice is the view, the sheer expanse of it. Even on hazy days, I can see farther than feels possible. The horizon stretches out in every direction, curving just enough to remind me that we’re all spinning together on this massive ball of earth and water. The air hits different too, lighter somehow, with that ever-present breeze brushing against my skin and filling my lungs. Standing on the tallest hill for miles, I feel small, but in the best way. I feel rooted in my place in the world, reminded that even my “extra” self belongs here. Because let’s be honest: creation itself is a little extra. The skies go over the top every evening, the wildflowers are shamelessly dramatic, and the grasses stand stubbornly tall. The prairie is unapologetic in its existence, and so am I.

The prairie has always been a teacher, whispering lessons in seasons. It doesn’t just have seasons, it embodies them. In the spring and summer, there’s a riot of greens, purples, and golds, buzzing with visitors. By fall, the colors shift, the air cools, and even the sound changes, softer but not quieter. The prairie has its times of abundance and its stretches of scarcity, and I’ve come to realize I do too. I’ve lived through hard, dry seasons where it felt like nothing would grow again. I’ve also had seasons of ridiculous abundance, where every day felt like a new celebration just because I woke up. The prairie doesn’t apologize for either. After a burn, controlled or otherwise, the green always comes back, tender and determined. Life doesn’t avoid the fire; it grows because of it. And that is a lesson I need again and again: what feels like an ending can just as easily be the beginning of something new.

Maybe that’s why I’ve never been much for the push of “more.” Somewhere between Kansas and Maryland, I let that go. These days, I crave the slower rhythm of the prairie. As a homeschooling family, we try to live in that same intentional pace, the speed of the slowest person. It’s not about falling behind; it’s about staying together, growing together, learning together. Rushing breeds frustration, and honestly, it leaves people behind. We’d rather move more slowly and notice more. Fertilizer isn’t necessary when you trust that what’s already growing is enough.

Of course, the prairie isn’t just wide-open horizons. It’s in the details too. One stubborn flower pushing up through the grasses. The sound of a grasshopper, the bend of a single stalk in the wind. That’s where I find contentment: in the vast and the minuscule. For me, contentment isn’t about giving up ambition; it’s about radical acceptance. It’s standing where you are and saying, “This is real. This is true. This is enough for right now.” That doesn’t mean you stop striving. It means you stop dragging what isn’t yours to carry. I’ve walked paths that dead-ended in obstacles, and eventually I had to admit, this wasn’t the way. Other times, doors swung wide open, one after another, almost like the prairie wind was nudging me forward. That middle path, the one that isn’t the easiest or the most traveled, that’s where I’ve found my version of contentment.

The prairie also reminds me I can’t bloom all year. None of us can. There are stretches of death and stillness, of quiet work beneath the soil. And then, suddenly, a season of wild, unrestrained growth. It’s humbling, this cycle of bloom, rest, and renewal. As an artist, I feel it in my own work: germinating new ideas, letting them take root, creating something that hopefully resonates, and then letting go, curating, releasing, sometimes deleting what doesn’t belong anymore. That cycle isn’t failure. It’s life.

And then there’s the quiet. My brain is usually a noisy place, loud, opinionated, with a touch of OCD making things extra unfriendly at times. The prairie offers a different kind of quiet. It isn’t silence, but presence. Always a breeze, always a rustle of grasses, always something alive and moving just out of sight. I never bring music out there. I want to hear it all, because that alive-ness hushes my thoughts in a way nothing else can.

That’s also why the prairie is where I’ve learned to let go. Out there, I don’t have to wear a mask or make myself smaller to fit in. I’ve yelled into the wind, cried on a trail, laughed until I doubled over, and each time the prairie simply holds me as I am. It doesn’t ask me to prove anything. It doesn’t need me to be productive or palatable. It gives me exactly what I need, even if I didn’t know to ask for it.

I’ll never forget the first time I felt that enough-ness sink in. It was on the highest hill, when my husband asked me to marry him. We were so young, so certain, and in that moment I knew: I was enough for him, and he was enough for me. That feeling has been our anchor through the years, through the lean seasons, through therapy sessions, through parenting our daughter who has taught us as much about patience and joy as the prairie itself. These days, we trade off who gets to be the priority, weaving our daughter into that mix, always circling back to each other. We’ve grown because we’ve chosen to, and the prairie has been a quiet witness to that growth.

And I suppose that’s what I carry home with me. Away from the prairie, I feel a little more guarded, a little heavier. But when I paint, those walls fall away again. The prairie comes back in color, in line, in softness and sass. Its hopefulness, its stubborn joy, its unapologetic beauty, it all lives in pastel dust across my fingertips. The prairie reminds me that we don’t need to rush, we don’t need to bloom endlessly, we don’t need to prove our worth through “more.” We are already enough.

And that, I think, is the truest gift the prairie offers, one worth carrying home again and again.