Idaho, 2015, Day Four

Today we finished with Kansas, eventually crossing into Colorado.  Two more states to cross off my bucket list.  Outside the windows, golden wheat fields stretch to the horizon on both sides, ahead and behind as far as the eye can see.  A few scattered towns, and I mean scattered.  Mile after mile after mile of sameness.  Nothing to hide behind if one should want to hide.  Ceaseless winds make keeping the van in the proper lane on the long straight ribbon of highway challenging.

Kansas is part of the Great Plains, America’s bread basket, and one of the unfortunate victims making up the Dust Bowl.  It’s hard to imagine the devastation of the 1930's dust storms wreaking havoc upon the prairies, now lush green and gold. Those storms swept away the topsoil loosened by deep plowing, blowing it to places as far away as New York City and Washington DC. With sixty per cent of the population fleeing the “black blizzards” and migrating to cities to find employment, Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Colorado and Kansas were changed for good.  With wiser farming methods and improved conservation techniques, prosperity gradually returned until the beauty we passed through today is the norm again.

A great deal of this nation’s history has happened here.  American Indians roamed these vast open spaces a mere century ago and it was easy, as we drove along, to let my imagination run with images of the Arapaho, Cheyenne, Comanche, Kansa, Kiowa, Osage, Pawnee, and Wichita peoples who were native to Kansas.  The state gets its name from the Kansa tribe and means “Wind People.” And no wonder.  The wind never stops, from what I can tell. As we drove hour after hour I thought that much of this land has not changed a great deal from their time, but only the people who inhabit it and I felt sad.  I can’t help but wonder how many personal tragedies took place over possession of this beautiful place and I feel small in the middle of its vastness.

“Can’t you just see a cowboy riding out there?” Barbara asked me.  I had been thinking the same thing.  And some buffalo, I thought.  Millions of them. But not anymore.  Just a whole lot of emptiness now.  Except for the wheat and the trains.  Very long trains snaking their way through the grassy plains bearing their cargo to wherever it is needed.

Gradually the plains gave way to gently rolling hills in Colorado. Dotted with giant wind turbines churning out their contribution to the electrical grid. The green pastures also held a few horse farms here and there, looking like toys in the huge panoramic landscape.  Coming from the steep hills and twists and turns of Holmes County, Ohio, this openness makes me feel like a bug, tiny, insignificant, and vulnerable to, well, to what I’m not sure.  I imagine the people who live here would find my neck of the woods claustrophobic.

We took a short detour through Colorado Springs so we could see the Garden of the Gods.  Mammoth red rocks unlike anything around them made me ask how they came to be there. Someone started off with “Well, a few hundred million years ago. . .”

What I wanted to hear was not a lesson in geology.  I want to know why these red rocks are jutting into the sky in such stark contrast to everything around them. I happen to agree with whoever in the van said they think God has a sense of humor.  Maybe he plopped them there just so he could hear all the crazy theories "brilliant" scientists would come up with centuries later.  Who knows?

We stopped for the weekend in Denver, the mile-high city.  And we introduced Wade and Barbara to the joys of Rook, the game all self-respecting Amish folk and their descendants know how to play.  I think a few more sessions and they might actually enjoy it.