We headed into the wild west today. We wavered on whether to take Interstate 80 or 70 across, or to meander down side roads and local highways, but in the end, we decided to take meandering highways, and to go to Dodge city.
But first, lots of pictures of kids. Everyone wanted their picture taken with everyone else in every possible combination. I began to be distracted, trying to remember exactly how many picture combinations we would have with 7 kids, but they got bored before I could remember what Mrs. Dooley taught me about those figures in algebra 1, so I was saved. I suspect my camera would have run out of memory before we had all those pictures taken.
After a quick stop at Sprouts and Michael*s, we were on our way.
Eastern Colorado is home to feed lots and cattle, as well as a bit of grain. It did not take much to convince the kids that the feed lots were not places anything, even a cow, could be happy in (if happiness is an emotion a cow can feel, which is questionable), and at least such conditions were not we intended by God, one could argue, and so now, when my children see cows munching happily on green grass in wide places, baby cows by their mothers, they yell out, HAPPY COWS! When they see a feed lot or dairy where cows are crammed into a pooopie mess, a mess that smells so bad it turns the stomach of the driver in a closed vehicle, the babies living in little 6×6 cubes, crying for their mothers, they somberly discuss how unkind this is to the cow. It makes so much more sense to a child to see the torment of animals first-hand that to talk about it in the abstract from the kitchen table.
Kansas brought more and more grain fields, rolling hills, and painful flat land. It is strange to look out to the end of the horizon and wish to see some sort of break in the interim, but find none. The ocean has waves and patterns of lines, the mountains have shadows and the texture of nearer and farther away. The horizon on the plains yawns on and on as the same color, the same distance, the same…everything. The variety the eye loves is missing, and therein lies the pain, I suppose. It took a few minutes, but we soon settled into a grateful silence in this invariability. It seemed, in the end, to be just the right amount of beauty.
Kansas really is the Wild West as we think of it. We drove through many small towns, most crumbling, some kept vital, but all appeared unchanged, at least to the imaginative, since the late 1800*s. Part of the endless sameness on out road were the old, un-used wires, held up by glass and dried, bending, cracked, stripped tree trunks, on one side, and the glittering train track on the other. We had a tiny adventure at a railroad crossing when we got to wait for a loooonnnnggggg train to pass, from pulling engines at the beginning, to pushing engines at the end, it was a 5-minute wait watching coal car after coal car. American energy in transit!
And then we came to towns that had familiar names: Hayes, Cimarron, Dodge City. Yes, Dodge City!
The first thing we noticed was that the Arkansas River was dry. Bone dry. This was a little disappointing because it was such a big part of the mythology of the area. After all, the herds of cattle were stopped by the river without the rented lead cow to show the rest it was safe to cross. And, of course, it was not safe to cross. After all, crossing meant a train ride to a slaughter house, for a cow. There are many reasons for the dry river, of course, some of them man-made. The second thing we noticed were the mosquitos. We were about to test the strength of the essential oils I brought with us. My oils worked well enough, but I made far too little! Not that we were eaten alive, but every bite was enormous, and itched quite a bit. I think these mosquitos are tiny minions of Satan, and I am driven to buy DEET on our next trip to the store. Finally, we discovered the camp animals: little toads, and the little tortoise-shell rag doll camp cat!
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