Meeting Persephone

I admit I'm not a fan of Kansas. I considered it unfortunate that between our home and my mother-in-law's was this enormous empty state. Don't get me wrong - I don't mean that there is a lack of exciting city life to keep an active city girl (which I'm not) entertained on the road. There is nothing but flat emptiness from one end of the state to the other. No mountains. No water. Very few trees. A great deal of corn and a small section of sunflower growth out on the extreme western edge are all the "natural" beauty this state has to offer. To me the most exciting part of the 6 hour drive on that miserably straight flat interstate is the sight of the wind farm between Salina and Hays and that doesn't come until nearly half way through. But when we drove home following my mother-in-law's funeral my husband uttered a thought just outside of Manhattan (the "Little Apple") that got my own wheels turning.

"What did the Indians ever see in this land that made them settle here of all places?"

Of course Manhattan is where Kansas begins to take on some of Missouri's geographic features and so, by the time he asked the question, we were nearly home and there was more to look at which I suppose softened my normal sour disposition toward Kansas. I gazed out the window at the softly rolling hills just beginning to be dotted with trees that would become more dense in a short time with twilight dancing in the light mists beginning to form in the shallow valleys and I could very much begin to see what might have appealed to the tribes in this land. My mind began to erase these modern white "conveniences" and a new landscape filled my eyes. Roads and buildings disappeared and revealed a more pristine place.

I saw a great deal of flat land that made perfect running space for the giant buffalo that would feed and clothe a nation of people through the winter. I saw space for ceremonies as well as clear path to track the movements of potential invaders or warriors from other tribes. I saw space also for neutral territories for the making of treaties. I could easily imagine large fires and faces lit around those fires sometimes smiling, sometimes tense with the hope of peace or rain or food, but always in the comfort of their nation of people. I saw young boys learning to ride their ponies and older boys learning to aim their bow while their knees dug into their horses' sides. I saw girls learning to clean and stitch hides for clothing and blankets.

In many ways, for those purposes, it was a perfect place for them - until us, that is. Of course now they are relegated to a tiny area of the state with all 4 reservations located in the northeastern most part of the state when once they'd roamed the entire thing. Before the internet and "civilization" (which is so seldom civilized anymore). Before interstates and cars. Before malls and planes. Before the stock market and insurance companies. Before all of that this was really a perfect place for a nation.

The other thing that people - I mean those really busy people who focus their lives on the "eat, sleep, work, shit" way of doing things - need to remember is that there was a time when people didn't travel across the country just to see what was there. It wasn't part of the culture to just take a jaunt and see how far things took you. These were a people that wanted to stay close to their ancestors and their tribe and the best way to do that (and for many the only way) was to stay in the land they'd always lived in.

I'm a mountain and tree kind of girl. I'm happiest in the mountains with plenty of trees around me and a river or creek makes it all the better. I find this to be the most beautiful that Earth has to offer and I'd have gladly lived in a cabin in Red Lodge, Montana if my grandparents hadn't sold it before I could buy it. But I can also find it very easy to believe that there was a time and a place where people didn't realize the Rocky Mountains existed and even if they had those gorgeous majestic mountains wouldn't have suited their lifestyle the way the plains of Kansas did.

Their world was small in a way entirely different than ours. It was small by choice and out of necessity. Ours is small because of "progress". What's the difference? They were contented and we are seldom content. Beauty to them was acceptance of the gifts around them. Beauty to us is the elimination of whatever we find to be offensive, "ugly", or undesirable and what we allow to exist after that is "beautiful". We will pick a spot we find to be beautiful and then fence it off, rearrange the order of growth in the yard, add a home that is far too large for what we really need and have finally created something beautiful. We do the same thing with appearances of people. Don't like your butt? There's a doctor that will reshape it for you. Have an unfortunate gap between your teeth? There's a dentist just dying to place veneers on them for you. Where we worry about asthetics they worried about strength and wisdom. While we worry about money they worried about survival of their entire people.

Who's richer?

The Trash Heap has spoken.