Those lights are the
farmers' sole
companions against the night.
It is difficult to understand their meaning when you drive by them. Try flying over them.
Nebraska, from the air, is a quilt of squares of soybeans,
corn, and maybe a little alfalfa. At night, you see those same lights, but you see them in their context.
When I last saw them, it was during a long
midwestern winter, so the fields glowed blue with the snow in the moonlight as I stared out my little porthole of a window. You can tell the farmers' lights by their color -- a more neon blue than the countryside itself, contrasting with the orange lights of the
city. And they dot the countryside, a little bright dot of blue along each of the patchwork squares...stretching into the distance.
So you see, in those lights, a quiet network of lonely
families and aging
farmers and the land that supports them, spread out with geometrical uniformity over a wild and unforgiving land...well, not so wild any more...it's a land where solitude flows as deep as the aquifer, which fuels the state.