Maybe what the world needs now, besides love sweet love, is some kind of grand Kansas/Oz symposium or conference, to sort out things like real world wonder from the make-believe kind, and the true meaning of “home” and whether Dorothy got it right, and whether the respective histories of the sunflower state and the realm of the wonderful Wizard share any revealing parallels, stuff like that.
Where would one stage such an event, and who would one invite? The second one’s easy: passionate Kansans and other prairie lovers for sure, along with the legions of Judy Garland fans out there and all those who’ve been smitten by the movie – which is an awful lot of people when you think about it – and there are also those enchanted by the the various spinoff books and movies and Broadway plays that the Oz franchise has spawned. Ideally folks should convene in Kansas, with the big college towns of Wichita and Manhattan coming immediately to mind, maybe in their respective football stadiums if enough folks show up. The weather would have to co-operate in that case, which in Kansas can be a tall order, though weather on our trip was almost uniformly co-operative.
Having it in the Emerald City, there at the end of the yellow brick road, might seem like a good idea until one realizes that that’s all make-believe, a fact which lies at the core of why this whole enterprise may not be such a hot idea, after all, for it brings us back to the whole reality vs fantasy conundrum. Does it make any sense to compare what is real with what is make-believe? Has this extended trip report not already attempted this to an absurd degree? The fact is, make-believe can have a powerful effect on people in a way that is altogether real . One need look no further than the notion of “Kansas” as held by everybody who knows the Oz story and nothing more – to them Dorothy’s Kansas is all they know, as opposed to those who live in that place or the truly interested who’ve taken the time to read about it or visit as our group did. One intention of this whole enterprise has been to demonstrate how very different those two notions seem to be, and how one unfortunate side effect of the power of make-believe, as entertaining or even enlightening it might sometimes be, is the way it can sometimes kill curiosity and generate all manner of assumptions based on nothing.
One could easily veer far off the tracks here into how “art contains its own kind of higher truth or reality” or whatever, as compared to the “real” world of facts and direct experience, and ravinginbeantown is notorious for such meanderings, but this narrative about our little junket to Kansas is getting mighty long at this point, and this narrator will wisely resist the temptation for now, to his and your great relief, and you’re welcome.
Propitiously our last day brought us to a physical real-world project that tackles some of this head-on, there in the town of Matfield Green, a few miles outside of Cottonwood Falls, population 52 or thereabouts. It so happens that a resident of that town, Bill McBride, happens to be a sculptor and prairie-lover, who has created one of the more original venues for his work, along both sides of the busy Burlington Northern Santa Fe right-of-way that cuts through the town.
What you get is the Prairyart Path, four miles of it, that wanders through typical preserved tall grass prairie with the added feature of Bill’s sculpture here and there, one man’s conceptual take on the ways the local environment speaks to him. Savor the plants and insects and the eerie quiet that prevails except for the wind, and ponder “art” in all the ways you might do that. It’s quite a unique experience and our trip leaders decided it was a must-visit on our last day, and a great idea it was.
Speaking of eerie quiet, let us not forget those railroad tracks and the BNSF freight trains that pass through with regularity, at which point “sound” takes on a whole new meaning. One might consider the presence of “Warren Buffet’s train set”, as Ed described it, to be an annoying distraction or just odd, but it’s within the realm of possibility that they are part of the artist’s vision. Railroads have long played a role in life around here, have since the mid-19th century in a big way, and their effect on the human and natural worlds cannot be overlooked. Any number of modern art works have included sound as an element, and in this case the distant rumble of diesel locomotives getting ever louder adds a whole new dimension to “eerie.” Once the locos have passed by, the deep bass notes of their motors is followed by the rumbly sound of the rails as the long behemoth snakes through. You can hate it or savor it but you can’t ignore it, and you might even be surprised by the lack of the expected clickety-clack. “Welded rails” is how Ed explained it, and it makes sense Warren Buffet would run a first-class operation, much of it in the service of moving coal down from Wyoming.
There’s the visual aspect as well. Train locomotives with their garish paint schemes are gorgeous, in their way. And then of course there’s the freight car graffiti, a time-honored genre of American folk art. In a way, the graffiti artists can be seen as a traveling exhibit, showing briefly at this particular venue only for as long as it takes for the trains to pass through it, or is this analogy starting to run off the rails here? This writer leaves that up to you.
But wait, there’s more! This place-for-art also offers an immersive experience in the form of Matfield Station, several Airbnb apartments that were formerly housing for RR workers, right next to the tracks. That means you can live here, up close and personal to all that rolls through, if only for awhile. Clearly not for everyone, but for nature-lovers who also love trains and art, or anybody who savors total serenity with occasional dramatic interruptions, it can’t be beat, and book your room for the season you love best today! Very highly rated! Ear plugs are provided, in case you were wondering.
This place was pretty much our last stop on this trip, but any wrap-up would not be complete without mentioning one final brief but consequential bird sighting. What finally turned up, thank heaven, was the state bird, the western meadowlark, sitting on a fence by the highway no less, which is the bird’s iconic perching place. Several times during the week Ryan had commented on the lack of this happenstance, driving along noting how “there are usually lots of meadowlarks on this road, this is so strange to not see any” and again the drought and excessive heat of the past summer were seen as factors. It was such a big deal that he stopped right there in the road which was blessedly traffic-free at the time, and we all got good looks, like it was some special rare species, which in a way it was in that moment.
There is a bit more to say about this. First of all, the western meadowlark was chosen as the state bird by a vote amongst KS schoolchildren in 1925. The bobwhite came in second and the cardinal third, and it’s a wonder that the populations of these birds remain relatively healthy in this day and age. It is also important to note that Kansas is a place where the ranges of the eastern and western meadowlark overlap, with the western more numerous. They can best be told apart by voice and certain subtle markings, so our brief sighting on the road was hardly definitive, something a certain kind of birder might find intolerable, but thank goodness none in our van seemed troubled.
Curiously, interbreeding between the two meadowlark species is a rare occurrence. Maybe it’s a pronounced disagreement in musical tastes, as their songs differ distinctly. Or maybe it’s the whole birds-of-a-feather thing, which can be a powerful influence in nature and not just when it comes to birds.
So with that undramatic but significant sighting of the Kansas state bird, along with everything else experienced and pondered throughout a memorable week, what’s left? The mind can conjure up any number of unsaid odds and ends, like our two trips out to the Tall Grass Prairie Preserve after dark to witness the night sky, where we saw that strange perfect row of Space X satellites drifting past, which was followed by an extended coyote conversation heard off in the distance. Were they talking about Elon Musk? Or Ed’s obsession with onion rings, which were part of most meals, with discussion and debate over their relative merits, which was followed by a vote.
Finally, the question can be raised of just what has been accomplished here, in eight exciting and enlightening installments? Has the pernicious concept of “flyover country” been sufficiently skewered and exposed for the arrogant lie that it is? Have we established what “home” is all about and how the Oz version was not quite the last word, with all due respect to Dorothy and the Wizard and Glinda the good witch? Has history come alive? Do we have new insights on the buffalo and the places they roam? Do we now see how Zion and Bryce cannot lay sole claim to the coolest sandstone landscapes? And what about limestone? Has our concept of the far west or the wild west or whatever been broadened just a bit? What about spacious skies? And that ancient Permian Sea?
And that’s not all, but for now it shall be declared that it’s enough. Foremost, do we have at least a better concept of land and place, and how it all begins with that? And how we need to cherish what is left of all land that is yet as it once was, like what’s been saved here in the Flint Hills of Kansas, and not just the pretty and exotic places? We spent the week in a place few outside of Kansas ever seem to think about, even those who consider themselves lovers of nature and who travel the world savoring it it in every possible location and habitat, the more exotic the better.
The spirit of Aldo Leopold was a constant presence on this most unusual ecotourist experience, to a place that most would consider the least unusual of destinations, so it seems fitting to close with a quote from the Wisconsin State Journal on the occasion of his entry into the Conservation Hall of Fame in September 1965:
“Aldo Leopold died in 1948, but he stands tall today, like a giant pine tree, visible from the remote corners of the land and from the concrete racetracks of civilization. His shadow has come to be the conscience of the monster ambition to make a great pinball machine of the world.”
