← PRAIRIE: LOAD BEARING
The Ones Who Stay
The Plains have been losing people for a hundred years. The ones who remain didn't stay by default. They stayed on purpose — building something, holding something, refusing to need anything from somewhere else. Some of what they hold onto is practical. Some of it is grief that doesn't have anywhere to go, so it stays too. And some is unyielding optimism. This chapter is about that refusal. The pride that doesn't announce itself. The independence that looks, from the outside, like ordinary life.