In the fall of 2001 I taught a beginning college composition course at Minot State University, a small state university located in the northwestern quadrant of North Dakota. It is typical of such courses to include a fair amount of reading, and one of the texts I assigned was Ian Frazier's "Great Plains". The book is a travelogue that Frazier wrote while living in and traveling throughout the "Great Plains". It is written in a direct and inviting style and provides insight about the very place in which the students and I were living. I thought students would take to it like the proverbial duck to water, so I was shocked when just the opposite happened. The students hated the book. As far as they were concerned, this place in which we live is boring. People--myself included--have long misinterpreted the Great Plains. When I first moved to North Dakota, this place seemed alien indeed to me. It wasn't just that it was big and flat, it was the lack of mountains on the horizon. I had no landmarks to reinforce the compass points, and I often felt exposed, a feeling that resonated on both physical and psychological levels.