Sidney Draw
draw: trace or produce a line or mark; pull or guide; extract
draw: a natural ditch or drain; a shallow valley
Last year I drove from Lincoln (Section 52 in my grid) to Scottsbluff (Section 37) to give a workshop as part of Picturing Nebraska.
![](http://elizabethingraham.com/wp-content/uploads/mapping-locator-map-with-sections-4.001.jpg)
As usual, I took the long way round—3 days and 629 miles.
![](http://elizabethingraham.com/wp-content/uploads/Screen-Shot-2015-05-13-at-1.12.53-PM.jpg)
Leaving Sidney (Section 62) for Kimball and going west on Hwy 30, I saw Sidney Draw on the map. Having drawn Sidney Draw I decided to explore it.
Here’s the topo map I used to draw Section 62. It shows a 33-mile square:
I drove south on Hwy 19 to Lorenzo and then made my way west on the county roads. I rejoined Hwy 30 at Potter, at the west edge of Section 62. My detour took two and one-half hours to travel 19 miles west.
![](http://elizabethingraham.com/wp-content/uploads/section-62-L3@150.jpg)
Here’s what I had drawn:
![](http://elizabethingraham.com/wp-content/uploads/Screen-Shot-2015-05-13-at-1.40.56-PM.jpg)
Here’s what I saw:
![](http://elizabethingraham.com/wp-content/uploads/CR-79-N-to-Potter-03.jpg)
What is it about these contours that soothes me?
I love the promise of each hill.
I love the way the grid of county roads breaks to yield to the terrain.
![](http://elizabethingraham.com/wp-content/uploads/Locator-Map-Sydney-Draw.jpg)
This landscape is tenacious. Its history (rock, sand, grass, fence) consoles me.
This tenacity, consolation and promise is part of what I want to carry in the wrapping I call Prairie Skin.
Landscape is history made visible. (John Brinkerhoff Jackson)
A dream of tenderness
wrestles with all I know of history. (Adrienne Rich)