Prairie Adventure: These Happy Golden Years, a DeSmet Pageant

If it is a July weekend in the town of DeSmet, there’s probably a crowd of people gathered on benches in a wide open field

in view of Pa’s Cottonwood trees

waiting for the sun to set a little lower and the prairie play to begin.

Nine nights each summer a cast of all-local, primarily high school students performs scenes from one of the four novels Laura Ingalls Wilder write that took place in DeSmet, South Dakota on the very prairie landscape these thespians are gracing.

You’ll want to pull your wagon up early to the vast field of a parking lot so you can ride on a real wagon with your family around the prairie.

Our kids were big fans of the balloon artist passing out balloon creatures and even some sort of a balloon fishing pole with a fish attached on its string that Otto wore on his head.  (And carried around inconveiniently in the car for many days until he mourned its shrinking into sad balloon oblivion.)

The DeSmet pageant cycles through four shows every four years – one for each of the last four novels written by Laura.

We happened to arrive for the summer of These Happy Golden Years.  That was a particular favorite among our kids so I’m glad our year fell when it did.

We watched as Almanzo began his courtship of Laura by providing comfort and a weekly ride home from her first miserable teaching post at the Brewster School.

Their courtship is a love story so sweet and admirable and the two high school students who portrayed the pair did a lovely job.

So many lines of the play were word for word from the actual writings of Laura Ingalls Wilder – and that always satisfies a purist like myself.

Of course, I also have a soft spot for high school theatre after spending nearly a decade directing plays populated by a high school cast and crew.  Their enthusiasm and hard work, their diligence and commitment always rivals that of their adult counterparts.

Naturally, Piper and Mosely wanted to gather autographs and get closer to the stage – which all the audience was invited to do following the performance.

The south Dakota sky definitely played a role – it seems it’s always a character out there.

The sky was large and unending and in some ways it made the play and the evening and the audience seem very small indeed against its natural vastness.

And that was good, I think.  Fitting, somehow.

A tiny cog, all of us, a piece of the puzzle – Laura and Almanzo included.  As Wendell Berry terms it – a membership.  And to all be a part of that is a privilege.

Smaller than the sky.

But bigger too.