If history is an attempt to determine and make sense of what-went-before, there are clearly many avenues down which one can choose to travel. The story of Bleeding Kansas took us a short ways down the Street of Human Conflict, so to speak, which we all know is a very long street, indeed, and sadly might just go on forever. Our little tour of the Sunflower State provided other routes to follow, as well, some of which have already been mentioned, including the Yellow Brick Road, which was not even in Kansas but has its associations, courtesy of Hollywood.
Bricks, of course, can be made of clay but also might use many other earthy materials, as well, sand and lime, for instance. Mushroom Rock State Park gave us a memorable glimpse of how Ma Nature can concoct impressive constructions in this manner, way more impressive than that path of yellow bricks Dorothy and pals followed in that movie. There is one interpretation of the Dorothy story claiming the author Baum meant it as an allegory of American politics from a certain time past, whereby the YBR represents the Gold Standard on which US currency was based up until 1971. That is all that will be mentioned here about that, but feel free to go down that avenue for as many blocks as you wish, and good luck.
The geological story of the Flint Hills is also a rocky story if there ever was one, and venturing south from Manhattan led us further down that particular road of history, which in our case also turned out to have a number, Kansas Highway 177, aka Flint Hills Scenic Byway.
The story of rocks essentially goes back to the beginnings of the universe, which in a poetic sense was the beginning of all life that eventually occurred, but when it comes to the planet terra and its biological evolution, the arrival of H.sapiens came along a lot later than the limestone and sandstone and shale. What matters is what happened then.
Probably in the beginning humans used the larger formations of that rock for cave dwellings or places behind which they’d hide from danger, and the smaller rocks might’ve served as crude projectile weapons. Much later somebody figured out how to flintknap the right rock into wicked sharp spear and arrowheads. With the coming of civilization and agriculture, all those rocks lying around had to be removed to clear space for livestock grazing and crops, and stone became the stuff of buildings and fences. This process was helped along in Kansas by government edict in 1867, and what resulted is still strongly in evidence along Kansas Highway 177 for many miles, a stunning sight.
In New England this same process had played out a hundred or more years before with the construction of stone walls as the forest was cleared out, a chore Kansans were spared. What is curious is that many farmers later moved west, some probably to Kansas and the like, and the forest has steadily returned. What we have today are miles of jumbled rocks that were once tidy walls, and many of these run through fairly thick forests in much of the state, one way you know you’re in New England.
As a reminder that this was still ostensibly a birding trip, an unexpected detour on some farming roads resulted in an avian encounter of the best kind, made even better because it was unexpected (though frankly, one of the charms of birding is that the unexpected is often the norm and can often be downright thrilling). It helped that we were traveling slowly on a dirt road, and it was easy for the whole group to just stop and look; on state highways and interstates this kind of birding is impossible for the most part.
The bird in question was the scissor-tailed flycatcher, a bird of open country and warmer places. We’d seen them in Texas, sitting on fences by the roadside, here and there in twos and threes. It’s a fairytale bird, worthy of a place like Oz – just look at the pictures! – with this ridiculously long tail, so long it appears it should be awkward for it to fly, but fly it does, tail streaming out far behind like a bridal train, as the images show. This sighting played out in typical fashion: one of our group happened to see one sitting in a tree by the roadside and everybody yelled STOP, and soon the vans had emptied and we were all looking around. Soon a second bird was seen near the first, then somebody looked out in the field behind and saw a few more, then somebody else looked across the road and saw even more, as the excitement rose and the cameras with the long lenses clicked furiously.
It was stupendous, and in the end Ed counted 28, the most he’d ever seen at once, by far, and actually quite unusual. Speculation followed as to what this was about, and the guess was that these birds, at the northernmost part of their range, were gathering up to head south, some possibly traveling as far as Central America. In coastal areas of New England tree swallows will gather about this same time by the tens of thousands in similar fashion, seriously weighing down the utility lines.
Continuing south on the Flint Hills Scenic Byway brought us to Council Grove, a place where history was not so much about rocks as it was about trees. Rocks may have their place when it comes to usefulness for humans, but generally trees are more favored for many reasons, and as has been said, arboreal species were scarce in Kansas and points west. This value was accentuated by the fact that the town lies on what was once the Santa Fe Trail, a trade route developed by western trappers and native tribes that was to become the Route 66 or Interstate 80 of its day in the mid-18th century, when manifest destiny was a thing inspiring countless hopeful settlers to head west. The historical marker tells all, though of course not really all, at all, but as far as this story goes, that’s all you’re going to get about this folks, and if you want to know more, you know what to do.
There were actually two historical markers denoting trees in Council Grove, emphasizing the reverence they inspire in that town, one an oak and the other an elm. The latter was a reminder that General George Armstrong Custer had a life before dying at the Little Big Horn, aka George’s Last Stand, aka Battle of the Greasy Grass if you’re Arapaho or Cheyenne or Lakota Sioux. One wonders if General Custer had any time to enjoy the farm he shared with Amos Kimball before his violent passing eight years later, and what became of his share in that farm, information likely found in the town records. We did not stop to check this out, but kept moving south to Cottonwood Falls, where we spent a few nights before our trip was over.
Cottonwood Falls offered more than its share of delights, but continuing with the prevailing rocky theme, the feature to notice is the many limestone buildings that line the main street and particularly the Citizens State Bank and extra particularly that bank’s drive-up window that is likely unlike any drive-up bank window elsewhere in the universe, and that includes places like Oz. Which raises the question of whether there are any banks in that imaginary place or do they even use money, and if so, is it based on the gold standard?
No matter; what does matter is that Ed and Sil had employed their local connections to treat us to a lecture and demonstration of stone-fashioning techniques by Luke Koch, the go-to stone guy in the area, who’d had a major hand in rehabbing a lot of the stonework on main street and elsewhere. This included that drive-up window shown in the pictures, and the stunning park that ran alongside it. Turns out Kurt belongs to an international association of stoneworkers, who’d held one of their conferences in the town recently, and that park resulted from a workshop at the conference. Kurt noted that attendees from Europe told him the local limestone was the best of its kind they’d ever worked with, no small compliment.
The day had started with a spectacular prairie sunrise right there along main street, and when Luke arrived he mentioned how he’d stopped to take pictures of it it add to his large collection of sunrise pictures he’d shot on his way to various jobs. He’s lived in the Flint Hills for most of his life, had attended KU up in Manhattan for awhile until he realized whatever he wanted in life was not to be found there. What he wanted to do was work with his hands, and getting a job with a stone working crew was all he needed, an outcome for which he is most thankful.
After the demonstration, we all went into the bank to see more of Luke’s handiwork. The presence of limestone is an unmistakable visual element of the Flint Hills, and even though too much rock in the ground precluded the advance of agriculture in thereabouts, such was not the case in most of the state – Kansas has been the #1 US wheat producer since back when it was just a territory. Rock in its way did its part to ensure that the tall hills prairie would persist, a strange and wonderful partnership that would later be joined by certain homo sapiens who realized, in time, how special the whole thing was when it looked like it was about to disappear forever.
This trip was mostly about our little group from parts elsewhere savoring the fruits of that partnership, though in some ways we were paying homage to it, as well, or that’s how it felt for some of us. It seems likely that this is what Ed and Sil and Ryan had intended all along.
