“They’re just a big pile of rocks,” my friend said. “What’s the big deal?”
Responding to such a concept—that the Rocky Mountains were nothing more than a jumble of boulders—left me all but speechless. My friend, a man just turned 35 years of age and never having once seen a mountain or a foothill, was heading to Colorado for a short, fast vacation. His destination wasn’t merely familiar to me, it was a place steeped in memory. As much as I envied him, I wished more to see the expression in his eyes when the snowy mountains rose from the ruler-flat horizon to forever inhabit his consciousness.
In the weeks leading up to his departure he cajoled and kidded about the trip. He dreaded eastern Colorado, asking if it was really flatter and more desolate than western Kansas. (It is.) Should he expect winter or spring temperatures? (Winter, always.) Would he see a dipper, a bird that flies underwater? (Maybe.)
Just before leaving, he surprised me by saying, “I might like it so much that I have to ask you what you were thinking of when you moved here.”
And then he was gone. I followed his exploits through sporadic comments and photos on Facebook, impatient for more. One image showed a broad flat valley ringed with misty peaks, light snow raking across the sagebrush. It was so evocative, so real, that I could feel the cold. I could taste the pine-scented air.
We talked at length on his return. The trip changed him, as all such journeys do when we navigate beyond the fields we know. It wasn’t so much the questions he asked that signaled a quantum psychological shift but the plans he was already drawing up for another outing. High on his bucket list, he said, was to learn fly-fishing. He couldn’t believe how clear the streams were, how icy cold, how beautiful. I told him I’d teach him.
The question came near the end of our last conversation. “After that,” he asked, “what did you see in Kansas when you first came here? How could you leave that?”
Though I’d half expected it, I was still caught off guard. In one of those psychic flashbacks where everything reels past like an old grainy slideshow, I was hurled back to 1974, newly married and exploring a world I never knew existed, that of small rural towns and friendly people and a landscape devoid of mountains. Our visit was transformative but not without concerns that continue to trouble me, namely weather that can kill you. We fished the Big Blue and small farm ponds, toured the unpopulated country, met a slew of new relatives who welcomed us with open arms. We were introduced to humidity so intense that it felt as if we were underwater. And yes, one evening we stood outside watching the sky turn the color of an old bruise and sirens roaring to life and I asked what was going on, what should we do, and they said they didn’t know. That they never knew.
“I couldn’t live like that,” I told Lori.
But it would not let me go. Enough so that for the next 26 years we discussed leaving the mountainous west for the Kansas tallgrass prairie, almost serious but not so serious that we were willing to write resignation letters to our respective employers. It was more of a pipe dream, wishful thinking kept carefully reigned in. That it took so long, and with so much anxiety, had less to do with successful careers, raising a family and comfortable niches than it did with the mountains themselves.
They had always been there serrating my horizons, drawing the eye, snagging clouds, a constant interplay of light and shadow. To give them up for a place devoid of even small hills seemed not just impossible but soul-killing. And yet there was something about Kansas that immediately appealed to me, some ineffable quality I could no more define than I could explain.
Though I tried, of course, to relatives and friends, to coworkers who questioned my sanity. My explanation ran through the usual themes of rural existence, of long dusty roads, sluggish creeks and sun-dappled woods, of a sense of freedom I’d never encountered in cities. My ace was the local phone book, a slender volume encompassing more than two dozen towns, which when placed beside the Denver metropolitan directory, all three volumes of it, would unfailingly trigger a dawning of awareness in their expressions. I’d tell them that the place didn’t have rush hour, it had rush minute, that the entire county had exactly three traffic lights, and the county immediately to the west had none. That kind of population scarcity was nearly impossible to fathom for those used to flourishing cities, and if at first they acted incredulous, scoffing at the lack of jobs, fine restaurants and recreational opportunities, it was really just a charade. At heart we’re all rural.
Harder to explain was how I felt at home there, as if I’d been away for a long time and only recently returned to the realization of how much I’d missed it.
Maybe Kansas is a state of mind more than a state of place. Maybe it’s not something words can convey. After a decade of living here I’m still struggling with questions that should be easy to answer but are not, so that when my friend asked that fateful question I was left mute, and could only shrug and tell him that the transition was easy, that it was the hardest thing of all.
6 comments:
Love this, Tom. Sounds like Kansas has always been in your bones...
Makes sense to me, though I'm actually a desert dog first and a mountain man second. Kansas fits smack in the middle of those two, I guess. Hadn't thought of it in those terms. Thanks for giving me a new idea to pursue.
Well done.
I was born to Kansas, yet it's sometimes hard to say why I stayed. I believe it really is the openness, the line of sight that goes all the way to where you know there is more beyond that and you could see it if you wanted.
Even Topeka is too confining for me sometimes, though I've lived here most of my adult life. I have to get out and stand where the land and the sky are all.
Now if we could just move the mosquitos, chiggers, ticks and tornados somewhere else, Kansas would be perfect. :)
Kris -- I once wrote that the reason Kansas is so heavily "blessed" with mosquitoes, chiggers, ticks, wheel bugs, brown recluses and blister beetles (among the other fifty zillion species) is that God had to fill the empty space with something after creating the Rocky Mountains. A small error on his part, I perceive. If not for that—and the tornadoes, hail, straight-line winds and downbursts—this would indeed be paradise.
But, hey, it makes for hardy people and tall tales.
On my "About" page on my blog, I have a few favorite things listed. Under "favorite place to be" I put "A hundred miles from anywhere". Maybe I should move to Kansas. Dang those winters, anyhow.
On the other hand, there's no question when Mom is gone and my varnishing days are over I'm gone from this coast. Doing hurricane evacs on my own at age 80 isn't my idea of a good time.
When I bought my last car I said I wanted a stick shift, cup holders and a good sound system. If I use the same approach for retirement it would be "A doctor within reach, an internet connection and a horizon." There's a lot of latitude in those search parameters.
Linda -- We have doctors, internet connections and a definite horizon. You'd like flyover country, and we'd like having you.
Post a Comment