In the Piñata:: Go Home Again

 Exordium:  I jotted this down while on plane or something, traveling to or from somewhere to race.  My guess is that I was coming back from a race, probably not a good one, evidenced by the somber tone and yearning for the land and life of my forefathers, blah, blah, blah.  Anyway, I'm putting this up as possible discourse material.  You can explore the questions of my probably inaccurate historical portrayal of my homeland, or what "home" means to a grown-up person, or maybe the passive aggressive blame I place on Europeans for screwing up the prairie.  I'm sure you can find something blasphemous.

A population map of Kansas.  Even I was surprised.

I am from north-central Kansas.  It is unlikely that you have ever been there.  I am from a land of plains and hills, beautiful open skies and fields of gold.  At night, you can see the stars.  Darkness is real.  You can stand in a field somewhere and be miles from another person.  You can have extreme privacy.

If you are outdoors in Kansas, it is likely that you will see a variety of weather in a single day.  In Minnesota it is cold.  In North Carolina it is humid.  In Kansas it is everything. Everyone says that about where they are from.  People from Kansas are not exaggerating.

Many roads in Kansas are still made of ground up rocks and they form a grid-network into the farthest reaches of the country.  Many roads are still only made from dirt.  Oftentimes grass grows up between the ruts made by the few trucks that travel there.  People on the Oregon Trail traveled on similar terrain.  The Oregon trail went through north-central Kansas.  A route I ran in college went near where the Oregon trail passed through.  The route of the Pony Express was a few miles north.

The area where I grew up was settled by poor Irish, Germans and Swedes. Many of the last names that are still there prove it.  I am related to Pfizenmaiers.  There are a lot of Larsons, Rundquists and Lunds around.  Before these intrepid farmers ventured out here, the Pawnee and Kansa tribes ranged over the land, following the bison herds in the summer.  Most of the land was grassland, passed over by hoof and foot.  Untamed, untilled.

Many people believe Kansas is flat and boring.  A lot of it is.  The eastern part of the state is however very hilly and contains some of the last uncontaminated prairie in the continent.  I’ve seen a lot of beautiful geographical features, but seeing the sun setting in the Flint Hills is one of the most wonderful.  As you head west, the hills flatten out and you can see for miles.  I have struggled to understand why people don’t like this.  You can see so much land and so much sky.  There is so little to get in the way.

Unfortunately though, this sort of proximity mitigation keeps the people of Kansas from a diversity of ideas.  People often look at Kansas as a crazy, right-wing place.  Politically that is very true.  In the past, politics didn’t affect the farmer and the country teacher.  They do now.  Things are changing in Kansas.  Some things for good.  Some not.  Kansas is shrinking.  Towns are disappearing, people are leaving. A lot of things that lead to the civil war and freeing of the slaves happened in Kansas.  Kansas was also a setting for atrocity on native people.

From my childhood home, you can run for miles and miles on rarely traveled and rarely maintained roads.  You will experience the sun and elements.  There are not a lot of trees to shade you or block the infamous, gusty wind.  The few people you meet may ask you if you are ok, though they probably expect that you came from our farm, and that you run.

Perhaps soon, if the Pawnee and Kansa people of a thousand years ago were to travel through time and walk through the fields, they would feel at home.  The towns and buildings would collapse and fade into the dust and the nomads of the future would dig up our artifacts from beneath another pristine prairie.