Coop's Corner: The Flint Hills, KS

Saturday, December 31, 2011

The Flint Hills, KS

The trek to the Kansas Flint Hills has been a very long, indirect one for me. In the past 40 years, I've both driven and ridden up and down I-35, most often to and from our southernmost boundary. The interstate passed right through an area with signage proclaiming the region as being the Flint Hills. Somehow, somewhere, long, long ago (Before Internet) I found out that the Flint Hills was an area that was mostly desolate, something very easy to witness by racing through at 70+ mph. Set this knowledge aside for a paragraph or two.

Back in the late '70's, a book was introduced, its title one very easily able to capture my interest. The book was "Blue Highways" by the author, William Least Heat Moon. A paperback copy was obtained, the book was read, enjoyed and stored away. A few winters ago (my reading season) while sorting through some old posessions, I came across the book and once again, read through it, confident that with the passage of time and gained experience having done more traveling back and forth across the country, quite possibly I'd have new impressions of the book. I did. Read the first time, my great focus was on place. Thirty years of time has allowed me to see less geography and more of the human experience. In other words, people met, ideas, human interaction and the like were the focus of what was taken away from the re-read.

Least Heat Moon was also the author of another book, one named "PrairyErth: a Deep Map". Dealing with Chase County, Kansas, essentially the heart of the Kansas Flint Hills, I was intrigued. The author was a known, as was interest in the central section of Kansas. Checking an online auction site, I found a cassette-based audiobook of PrairyErth and "Bought Now". I listened on my commutes and wherever and whenever I had quiet breaks, hearing many chapters numerous times. The decision was made to motorcycle to the area, the only questions being when and with which of my bikes to make the trip.

The duration of time available for the trip would have a bearing on which motorcycle, as well as the route to/from, all choices involving ever present compromise. I toyed with taking my large sport touring bike, hustling down to KS, confining myself to the larger, primarily paved roads which wouldn't have been a very good option considering the lack of roads in general, not to mention that they are almost exclusively rough gravel and poorly maintained. My smaller machines and one in particular, my Yamaha TW200, was the ideal bike for the roads themselves but was less than ideal (most of my friends would say woefully inadequate) for the ~500 mile trip down from Minnesota.

While attending an early season BMW rally in the midwest, friends once again encouraged me to ride down and attend the Missouri Falling Leaf Rally, the St. Louis BMW Riders' gathering in October. It suddenly dawned on me that it would make an almost perfect trip to trailer the Yamaha down to Kansas for part of a week, then pack up, head east and spend the last half of the week in eastern MO. Seemed like a perfect plan and it was. Watch for a future post.

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"it was auspicious to approach any situation from a deferential, inquisitive place. Conceding that there is much to learn is the best blueprint for discovering something new." ----B. Fuller

The Man straightened stiffly above the block of salt fixed to the stake and looked at the young cattle ringed about him. The pasture was holding out well and the stock was looking good. This bunch would be ready to sell in another month, maybe sooner if the market was right.

A stir among the cattle down near the river brought him round to face the swinging bridge he'd built years before. Someone was coming toward him from the bridge. Someone in breeches, but it didn't look like a man, somehow. What was a woman doing in his pasture this time of night?

He bent over the salt again; maybe if he paid her no heed she'd go on past and let him mind his own business. He heard her footsteps come nearer and stop. "Good evening," she said.

Her voice was smooth with book learning but friendlier than most, and somehow almost shy. When he made no answer she went on, "I've been sitting on your swinging bridge....I thought I'd like to say thank-you...." Her voice stumbled a little, then she tried once more.

"You are Mr. ____". His name sounded strange in her voice, but she went on to tell her own.

"That's what they've called me the last sixty-eight years," he said, looking past her face to the hills fast darkening under a single star. "I reckon the woods are free for those that like to walk there."

The unfamiliar voice laughed a little. "That's what Emerson said: the grove belongs to the man who walks in it with an open heart....On that basis I guess I've owned part of your woods for a good many years.....". She made a final effort. "I've always wanted to thank you....."

Something deeply hidden stirred in him. "There's a stump up there, in the notch of the woods", he said slowly, "that before the timber grew so tall you could stand on it and see all over this country."

He kept still a minute, remembering, then, "I used to stand up there an' look at things, an' wonder how they come to be like they was, an' how the hills was created, an' all the things in Nature.... I told my wife I guessed all the religion I ever had I got standin' on that old stump, a-wonderin'..." He turned his face away from her.

She helped him out. "I know about that, a little. This afternoon I saw......." Her account of a thing she had really taken time to look at eased him, and he answered with telling of the badger den at the foot of the swinging bridge.

When she had gone, he turned to watch her. After a moment she stood clear and unmoving against the sky. You could hear the sounds of the river where she stood. She was one that could stand still long enough, he thought, really to hear what a body was saying, or a river.

Then she walked down the farther side of the slope and was gone. ------Margaret Snyder from A Chosen Valley

Fall was the end of harvest, end of the growing season, a burst of color and sun-warmth before killing frost turned the land gray and cold. Fall was a moody time, full of both life and death, a time when we were reminded of the power outside of us, reminded that the seasons happen to us. We do not invite the change to come.-------Ben Logan, from The Land Remembers

When you get those rare moments of clarity, those flashes when the universe makes sense, you try desperately to hold onto them. They are the lifeboats for the darker times, when the vastness of it all, the incomprehensible nature of life is completely elusive. So the question becomes or should have been all along, what would you do if you knew you only had one day, or one week, or one month to live. What lifeboat would you grab onto? What secret would you tell? What band would you see? What person would you declare your love to? What wish would you fulfill? What exotic locale would you fly to for coffee? What book would you write? ------- Ben Tyler

We were also cautioned about journeying far from home. As an example of the dangers, the town had a badly crippled lady named Lucy, who as a girl had traveled to New York City. As she traveled along a sidewalk, sightseeing, she was struck by the outstretched hand of a suicide who had leapt from high above. Her spine had been shattered and for the rest of her life, she was to walk bent forward at the waist, tapping the sidewalk with two black canes. Whenever the subject of travel to a big city was raised, someone would say, "Just remember what happened to Miss Tripp." ---- Ted Kooser, from Local Wonders

"Steamboats are like wedding cakes without the complications...." ----Mark Twain

"It's not about having lots of money, it's about having lots of options......." -----Chris Rock

As the very proud father of three former ponytail wearers, hopefully I can get away with this....."For the past few years it's been fashionable for young women to wear ball caps and to snap the strap on the back under their ponytails. I like the looks of that, their shiny ponytails jauntily swinging, but it's hard not to think of the rear ends of horses. There's a piece of harness called the crupper that goes just under a horse's tail to keep its nose down. If the horse lifts its head to look for a way out of whatever predicament it's in, the crupper tightens and hurts the horse. But it's foolish for parents to think that a ball cap might keep a young woman from running away. Anybody can see they're made for running." ------Ted Kooser, Local Wonders

"I tell the guy's girlfriend that the only difference between the book's main character Phaedrus and myself is that I am neither brilliant, tortured or insane, she looks at my bike and there is an uncomfortable silence." --------ahendepe (a.k.a. Vermin)