A Fall Day Afield

Seems like my recent postings here could be called, "Reflections of a mature gentleman", subtitled, "musings of an old guy". Well, let's suffer through this one more time.

Yesterday I climbed on my four-wheeler and went for foray out over the countryside hereabouts. Now, to do this you must be familiar with the land, where the old logging roads wind through the timber, where the wire gaps are in the fences, and where the old home places are hidden in overgrown pastures.

I had my camera with me and decided to take some photos of the old wrecks of houses and barns, the collapsed cabins that have settled to earth in a grove of trees, the faint marks of humanity on the land. Then it hit me: All these structures were standing when I was young.


The old relic of a house was inhabited then, a family tending the fields in the creek bottom. This pile of boards and logs was a place, though abandoned then, had the traces of children in the upstairs bedroom where I sifted among their scant leavings. I realized out there yesterday that I have experienced a broad span of years in the surrounding land. Let's just say that yesterday I felt experienced.

Twas a beautiful fall day and I gloried in it, accepting my continually broadening span of years as something more than simply a relentless aging. History resides in me. I know these things personally. They don't come from old books. In fact, in a certain way I wish I was older.

I wish I was personally acquainted with the folks that lived in that sunken house. I would like to see their faces in my mind, perhaps have attended a spare one-room school with their rambunctious offspring.

Then, I would have even more to muse about on a clear fall day in the Ozarks.

The Hired Man at Rock Eddy Bluff Farm www.rockeddy.com

Pursuing Prairie

It is cold, raw outside and the wind is coming off the prairie at 20 - 30 knots, whistling into the small town where we are parked with our camper. It is a dark, raw day, so we keep mostly inside except to walk our dog PeeVee. For the last few days we have been in pursuit of prairie.

I don't understand it myself, but there is something about prairie the seems to draw me, to stir my imagination. I suspect it has something to do with orderliness; coming away from the country of precise rows of crops and the almost manicured appearance of improved, permanent pastures. Here in the prairie there is none of that, just miles of rolling green grass stretching to the horizon. There are trees, yes, but they are mostly confined to the draws where small creeks and rivers support massive cottonwoods.

We started in Missouri a few days ago and made a brisk march to one of our favorite spots in the state, Prairie State Park, located nearly astride the Kansas line. There, a herd of some 150 buffalo roam a space of roughly 4,000 acres. There is a space for dry camping in a grove of tree surrounding a small creek. There are few people, little regimentation as is normal in state parks. I am free to be in the prairie -- to imagine I am on the way west in the sea of prairie. Or, perhaps I might just want to find a spot on a knoll and become "Pa", resting from building a soddy for Ma, Mary and Laura.

Presently we reside smack in the middle of the Kansas Flint Hills, a geological formation that runs the north/south length of the state. Prairie exists here because of the thin soils that reject plowing. The result is a carpet of native blue stem prairie grass sweeping over the rolling countryside, that provides perhaps the best cattle grazing in the nation.

We have days ahead for prairie, so to spend today in what the missus calls a "jammy day" is not an extravagance. And, I have time today to muse about prairie. Friends will likely find us here in the next day or two and we'll add some "catching up" to our prairie experience.

Tomorrow's to be a bright day and we intend to use it.

From Cottonwood Falls, Kansas, the Hired Man and Missus
www.rockeddy.com