We traveled up the highway in the dark, leaving the city lights behind, as flat farmland unrolled around us in every direction. Aside from the occasional cluster of buildings whose pointed cone roofs rose above the faint forms of small homes, their lights glowing warmly within, there was much of nothing to see.
Then against the barren black, one red, flashing light in the distance became many.
And a broad, pulsing bank appeared, hundreds of acres across.
On the horizon, beat the heart of a sleeping giant.
By day, it looks quite different.
The tall turbines of Horizon Wind Energy stretch in lines, or arrays, towering up to 300 feet above the fields in northwestern Indiana. While beneath them, combines and trucks roll like the toys of a child--the season’s harvest, now, both wind and corn.
Operational since October 2009, Meadow Lake Wind Farm’s 121 wind turbines, whose rotors and blades each sweep an area 250 feet across, have the capacity to provide 60,000 homes with clean energy each year.
close-up of area beneath turbines for scale (below)
Clean and white, their long arms slowly and silently sweep.
By night, their presence nothing more than a heartbeat.