Nirvana nearing in Nebraska

MAXWELL, NEBRASKA | As I exit Interstate 80 and start driving north on the 56A Spur through this town of 312 residents, I cannot help but think I have seen this movie before. The expansive and cloudless cobalt-blue sky. The grassy hills on either side of the two-lane blacktop, pocked with natural blowout bunkers that expose the sand that lies underneath. The Aermotor windmills and clusters of Black Angus heifers sipping the water those mechanisms pump from the ground into circular steel tanks.

The road is narrow and curvy in places, so I strive to keep my eyes front. But I cannot stop glancing on occasion left and right. And when I do, I see golf holes. At least in my imagination. A par-3 here, with a tee perched on top of a stubby dune and a green set in a dale below. A 4-par there, with a fairway snaking between a pair of ridges. And I think back to the first time I ever ventured to the Nebraska Sandhills – which make up a 20,000-square-mile island that literally floats on top of a massive aquifer – and realized that this place b...