The second time an adventurer might seek new sights along a different route.
But by the eighth or tenth time along similar paths, it is simply a trip… lots of miles to cover and diversions are few and subtle.
The physical journey consists of going south from Minnesota to Kansas City, then choosing one of the diagonal two-lane routes that lead southwesterly to enter the southwest without facing the potential cold and ill weather of the high-elevation passes over the Rockies. The mental and emotional journey occurs as one lets go of many of the complications of modern life to focus on living in the moment.
A geologist drills through layers of rock, discovering the nature and history of the earth by examining the layers in the core sample. A dendrochronologist augers through tree layers, studying changes in the environment through the growth patterns in ring after ring. They are both tunneling back through time. Though they study every layer and ring, the scientists will admit that some are more interesting than others.
So it is with this journey. The Idiots’ driving route is a tunnel through American ecosystems and cultures. They pass through many slices of physical and human ecology. It always provokes long ponders on the nature of beauty… and sometimes the beauty can be hard to find.
America is an immense country and has innumerable sights of almost impossible beauty. The postcard views of the Grand Tetons, Vermont fall colors, red rock arches, the Grand Canyon… are iconic images - dramatic beauty suited to illustrate monthly calendars.
The Idiots’ route to the Southwest contains none of those sights. Heading south through Minnesota and Iowa they pass through farm country. In October, most of the crops have been harvested and those that haven’t present in a palette of browns. Some shrubs and trees provide yellows and reds to the landscape, but not the kind of views one feels compelled to stop and photograph.
The landscape becomes more rolling south of Des Moines into Missouri and Kansas… but, again, these are not the kind of views to make one stop and gaze in wonder.
Heading across Kansas one passes through an area known as the Flint Hills… naked hills of gray flint barely clothed in a thin layer of topsoil, the rock peaking out exposing attractive ledges and small cliffs here and there. Among the hills, small woods of trees alternate with rich farm fields.
The trees are not large. The tops of the copses are flat, like a giant lawnmower makes periodic appearances. The Idiots speculate that lightning and wind pick off any off any trees that attempt to set themselves up over their peers. There are some fall colors – but by late October these are mostly subtle shades of yellow and brown.
So one looks deeper for beauty. The Flint Hills were originally tall grass prairies and even though farms and mines have removed most of the original growth, the ditches and unplowed sections and abandoned areas provide habitat for an immense diversity of grasses and prairie plants. Slowing down, looking closely, one finds subtle beauty. There are dozens of shades of reds and yellows in the drying grasses. Even in October, the observant eye will pick up accents of color… shrub roses throwing their final blooms… elaborate seed heads, some demonstrating the mathematics of chaos and others the precision of the Fibonacci spiral… arching prairie grasses topped in feathered blooms.
There is beauty – but it is subtle.
Points of interest are few… but one does run across the occasional roadside attraction. The Idiots, realizing they needed something visual to share with their friends, turned their rig around to get photos of some hay bale art. And they spent a very pleasant hour wandering around a nineteenth-century one-room country schoolhouse.
Hay bale ART? Perhaps a stretch of the word… but one has to admire the commitment to whimsy!
A glance to the right, the eye carried up the length of a harvested soybean field by lines of trees – curiosity required a u-turn in search of an access road.
Is there anything like a closed gate and barbed wire to inspire trespassing?
The life of the settlers was rustic at best… but the schoolhouses that dot the landscape of rural middle America are a testimony to the commitment by those settlers to provide education to their children.
Doesn’t look too bad for a centenarian!
Little Outhouse On The Prairie
Actually… very civilized… TWO little outhouses on the prairie… His and Hers…
Man makes his mark… and this is an enduring landmark… but everywhere one finds evidence of impermanence as nature slowly retakes its own…
