This is an REI co-op production.

It's hard to hide from the sky in the Dakotas.

Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Eastern Montana.

No matter where you are out there, you feel like you're on a hill.

The land around you sloping gently off to a distant horizon,

and you're just laying down and admitting the sky supremacy.

You'll never know how the sky can hold you until you've walked along a field out there in an afternoon,

an early summer with nothing else around but the sun and that infinite blue.

You'll never know how cold you can be until you've felt a January wind unroll without a ripple across a thousand miles of uninterrupted sky.

And there's nothing in this world quite like watching a towering wall of textured darkness shot through with lightning

flow slowly across that enormous sky toward you.

From indoor is a big plains thunderstorm like that, it's just impressive.

But if you've ever been caught outside as one rolls in,

caught out with nothing but a jacket or a tent for shelter,

then you know what the story is about.

You know that primal feeling of fear and helplessness that comes as the first dark clouds catch up with you.

You understand why the old stories gave life and consciousness to the chaos that breaks so suddenly around you.

Called it the Thunderbird, gave it a mind of its own.

Nothing without a mind could ever be so crazy.

But you can't hide from the sky on the great northern plains.

And when you have nowhere to hide from the things you can't control, you may break.

Or you may learn to call upon the things more powerful than fear.

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