Now
on the blank prairie a rare tree stood, robust, overlooking its
company of grass-laden hills and beloved neighboring window lake. A
subtle breeze folded through the open, pulling ripples across the
lake's crystalline surface, brushing between the twiddling leaves of
the tree. The limber bows were galvanized into a tendril dance of
vivid, mystic motions. It waved as I passed.
A
pheasant, in brilliant coat to match the prismatic season erupted
from the green depths of the roadside and clucked away, flapping its
wings violently on the quiet air, descending, then fading beneath the
strands of grass at a distance, safe from my threat. On a pond, a
terrorized mother duck bugled her warning, pressed and ushered on her
startled ducklings, all who scooted forward with spurts across the
surface toward a shroud of yellow-gray reeds and tall green leaves
sprouting up round the water's edge, thrusting a quivering trail
behind them in their paddle-foot retreat.
The
hills grew in height as I approached the Missouri. It snaked a path
between the green, waving lands, swollen and raised by northern flood
rains, distributing the eroded soils of agriculture southward. At
Mobridge I crossed the river and followed west into further open
prairies and bounding hills, all vacant but for the purple and yellow
kaleidoscope of wildflowers sprouting from the wild grasses. A
trailing length of wire fence paralleled the roadside, and an
occasional distant, solitary unit of reservation housing stood on the
plain, a dirt drive bending over the land from each.
Distance
and duration between towns increased. I was entering what was once
the Western frontier, and it was evident by the names of the towns
(Little Eagle, Thunder Hawk, White Butte) and also in the tangible
feeling of an absence in the land. The towns Bison, and then Buffalo
passed by, both dull and forgotten, the surrounding lands all vacant
of their namesake. These empty hills were meant for the bison to
roam, slowly walking, massive, brown faces and beards dipped to the
ground, gnashing blades of grass in rows of teeth; a collection of
broad shoulders, chests, forelegs, and heads draped with matted fur;
bald sinewy bodies and
rears in spring shedding the last tethers of fur from winter; cloven
hooves dug into the soil beneath the great weight; wild horns bending
from the skulls' opposite hemispheres to the burning sun; a fluid
unit of life flowing, undulating over the slopes; literal behemoths
plowing the land, pausing occasionally, throwing themselves with a
great rumble on a barren patch and rolling in the dust, great clouds
billowing to the sky; the vast body spreading and multiplying,
dispensing seeds and perpetuating the prairie and enduring the
annual, disparate shifts in climate; docile, black eyes looking
patiently on a frozen white landscape, penetrating arrows of wind
flowing over and around the phalanx; curling drifts sculpt round the
solid matriarchal ring,
they themselves a bulwark against the frigid months, unwintered
young shivering in the
sheltered core; insulating beards and locks grown thick and long on
their bodies in the designated season, gathering lengths of frost to
them as they stand stalwart, patient, wind-blazoned, or trudging
through the barren expanse; steam rising from the nostrils, staring
on white space, preserving their lives, strong, resolute, beyond
humility or pride. I see their absence, an invisible scar of a once
richer west spent.
Plains
undulated to every distance, rolling, rolling with brushing wind. The
tops of silos and a water tower on the horizon laid along the length
of road, peaking above the grassy waves. Old wooden buildings,
weathered by centuries and faded, grew toward me and I came to a gas
station, a propped up pickup shedding its parts in the oily garage.
The prairies here were all designated reservations. A few native men
hung out in front of the shop window in greasy t-shirts, shooting the
breeze on their midday work break. I went into the station, bought
some chips and refilled my water, the next town being thirty miles
off and without a guarantee there'd be a station there. I had to keep
better stock of my supplies now.
I
threw my leg over top of my bike, kicked my foot into its strap cage,
and started pedaling off the lot. Squinting down the street the way
I'd come from I saw two odd shifting dots on the roadside. I stood
and waited, with excitement growing, and decided it had to be two far
off people on packed bikes riding through these same afternoon plains
toward town. Once they'd come closer to the station I distinguished
clearly a guy and girl, hauling along on white bikes with four saddle
bags each strapped to the sides. They wore black spandex shorts and
matching riding jerseys, helmets strapped on, crowing their heads,
and every exposed inch of skin colored brown by so many cycles of the
sun. These were clean adventurers in all the vestments of their
trade. Everything between the two matched. They coasted across from
the street's far shoulder, hopped up the curb and squeezed on their
brakes to a stop on the sidewalk beside me, meeting my big smile and
wide eyes with great smiles and eyes of their own.
Through
an exchange and brief talk we told each other of our separate
origins, routes, and destinations and I came to know them each as
Adam and Christie. They were pausing here at the station for lunch.
Christie unhooked a pannier from her bike, “You want to come hang
out for a bit?” I grabbed my chips, followed into the store's
meager deli, and we each took seats in the folding chairs at the
solitary square table.
Christie
unbuckled the pannier she was carrying and removed a bag of
tortillas, placing two on the table. Adam tore neat corners from two
mayonnaise packets, and then drew a winding white line over each of
the tortillas middles with finesse gained only from routine. Christie
carved the top off a tuna can and spooned dollops over the mayo. Adam
waited with eager eyes and then trickled almonds and cranberries on
top of it all from a clear plastic bag. “It's kind of like having
chicken salad,” he explained while he rolled his up, grinning in
response to my quizzical look. “Anyway, we've experimented and
rotated meals quite a bit by now, and this just never seems to get
old.” Everyone really does develop their own unique patterns.
They'd
been out since January, crossing bitter New Mexican colds under the
freeze and blizzards of the southern Rockies. Across they'd gone
through Kansas and Missouri flats, the bayou Louisianan coasts,
bridging the Mississippi, Florida panhandle, pointing noses north to
Maine, stretching themselves across the east in the flourishing green
spring, then bending route west, and rolling out a similar path to
what I'd done since Ohio. Come mid-October they hoped to have hit at
least a piece of every state on the way to a continental finish in
Washington state. “Then once we get there we'll take off on a
Pacific ferry from Seattle for Alaska, and spend a few days riding
round Anchorage,” pulling a full-circle in the seasons before one
final jump to the island paradises in Hawaii, completing their
self-propelled circumnavigation of the country.
“What's
been your favorite state in all your travels?” Christie asked me
for comparison.
“South
Dakota,” I responded instinctively. “Maybe it's just because I'm here
now, and it's most rich to me since it's most recent, but I love
every part of this land. The barren wilds of the Badlands to the
fields and fields of crops. It gets me and I get it. What about you?”
“We
liked Wisconsin a lot. It's all trees and hills, beautiful, all
picturesque, and the most kind people and positive experiences, I
think. Plus we had nice weather the whole time. It was just simple
and beautiful riding through there.”
I
started thinking about where we were now in all this land, how, out
of the immense length and breadth of it, in our slow paces we crossed
ways here. A great expanse of thousands and thousands of miles behind
us and now we sat, in the midst of months with months yet to follow,
and so many unseen things lying beyond the fielded horizon.
I
looked out on the peaceable plains, and I wondered why I'd said that
this place, of it all, was my favorite. Maybe this was still home?
but no, that was limited to the ways of nostalgia and reminiscence
now. It didn't harbor that feeling for me anymore. If it had once
fully possessed that position, those days were old and gone to me.
Its people and soil were known to me and pleasing, its scent and
sight satisfying to my discontented depths. Its substance was
integrated with me more so than the substance of any other save one:
Arizona. That raw state of infinite canyons, the points of the San
Francisco peaks, the towering pines there, the transitory Flagstaff
streets, the three mesas and their prophetic tribes: all these own
the same perfection I find in Dakota's stalks of corn, the pristine
stillness of the Black Hills in winter, a copper sun on the
primordial Badlands, or quartzite columns on the Split Rock Creek.
All of these, in thought and presence, comforted and placated me.
Both put me in a reverence still (and always would), but were these
those things which defined for me home?
My
past and childhood, a strangely nomadic modern American life, which
was defined by a chain of migrations, my parents and sister and I
tossing each year between the various states and regions during my
most impressionable age, instilled in me a grand appreciation for the
beauty that is perpetual change.
My home has exceeded the boundaries of states. It be only this
country, America, having held me all my life, who has served me as
home. Her parts had cradled and grown me in her arms, turning me over
in her many fingered hands, bringing me up to intimately know the
textures of her various touch. Only America as a whole, herself, may
claim what her individual parts cannot. She alone is my land and my
home; she alone, my bed and my rest.
My
new friends were going west along the same road as me, the only road,
and so we went on together for the next couple days' ride. There was
a warmth in their company and the brightness in their eyes. They had
a well of perfectly measured friendliness that begged to be drawn
from. We all wanted to take the country, so we did.
Photograph albums: 1, 2, 3, and #4. Just click those numbers and enjoy! Off to Mexico for a week, then more posts.
Photograph albums: 1, 2, 3, and #4. Just click those numbers and enjoy! Off to Mexico for a week, then more posts.
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