The most fun I had all summer was flying with the ranchers in their small planes. We went out in Piper Cubs, two-seater planes that are really small and tight inside. It was especially fun flying over the ranches, where the landing strip is just a strip in a pasture.
I went flying with Nebraska Sandhills rancher Dan Vinton. His wife rode a four-wheeler out ahead of us on the strip to run the cattle off before we took off. During takeoff, we often ran across cow patties and got manure on the wings.
Their ranch is huge, covering tens of thousands of acres. Each cattle pasture had a windmill to supply water. When Dan needed to check them from time to time, to make sure they were working, we flew low—at about 50 feet (15 meters)—right past the windmills, with the cattle scattering like crazy. We saw a sea of sand dunes stabilized by grasses, and could see how the dunes formed, how they blew in prehistoric times, where the rivers were, where the cattle trails went, and where the old ranches from the 1920s used to be.
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I got stuck in a dust storm in northwest Kansas. It reminded me of the dustbowl of the 30s. I was north of Oberlin, Kansas, where I'd gone to photograph an old, abandoned one-room school.
In the afternoon a storm front came in. I was standing in the middle of a highway with howling wind blowing up a huge dust storm around me. The dust was so thick I could hardly see, even though it was still daylight. The cars had their headlights on.
I stood there and waited and waited for someone to come along. In the meantime dust was getting in my cameras, my lenses, my teeth, and my eyes. Later that evening I spent a lot of time wiping mud out of my eyes.
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Every year they burn the Flint Hills of Kansas, which rejuvenates the land. People usually do a burn from a pickup or a four-wheeler, dragging a firestick behind them. But the family I went out with were doing it from horseback, which was really interesting. They would ride along, strike a match, drop it, ride a few more feet, and do the same thing all over again. Pretty soon there was a whole wall of fire behind them. The horses weren't afraid because they grew up doing this and were comfortable around fire. I was on foot and had to watch my backside to make sure I could get away. It looked very dramatic.
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