Flyover People
Cheryl Unruh
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
A person can’t travel too far in Kansas without running across a sign or some mention of the Santa Fe Trail.
For instance, Council Grove is full of reminders. It was a major stop along this route which bisected our state from northeast to southwest.
William Becknell started the trading route in 1821; he left Franklin, Mo., and headed for Santa Fe, N.M.
This spring I had personal contact with the trail when I stood in wagon ruts near Baldwin City.
Out on the virgin prairie, swales in the land are remnants of the trail; wagons packed down the earth, creating troughs.
And with my feet on the ground where the wagons once rolled, I felt a connection with those hardy travelers. There, it was easy to imagine voices shouting to one another; I could almost hear the creaking of wooden wheels and wind flapping the canvas tops of the prairie schooners.
The other day while reading “On the Santa Fe Trail,” a book edited by Marc Simmons, I was fascinated by the journals of those who traveled across Kansas in the mid-1800s.
These writers tell about rattlesnakes, eating prairie dogs, cooking over buffalo-chip fires, and about numerous encounters with Indians.
An entry in David Kellogg’s 1858 diary mentions observing a comet while camped along Cottonwood Creek: “The night watch passes quickly as we gaze at the flaming wonder in the heavens and watch, meanwhile, for the sneaking savage in the grass, for the twang of the bow and the silent, death-dealing arrow.”
That trail is part of our state’s history and also a part of mine. As I’ve mentioned before, I grew up at Pawnee Rock. Just north of town is a mound of Dakota sandstone rising high above the Arkansas River Valley. Pawnee Rock was a famous lookout point along the trail.
When I rode my bike to The Rock, tourists would ask questions and I’d respond the best I could with a 12-year-old’s knowledge of the area’s history.
During my days in Pawnee Rock, we’d see the blue and yellow Santa Fe locomotives run through town. The words Santa Fe were constantly in front of us.
Every year the railroad donated calendars to our school classrooms. Hung on the wall near the pencil sharpener in each room, the calendar showed the railroad’s logo and featured an image representing the Southwest.
Kansas was just part of the trail, a big part to be sure, but there was also that destination point: Santa Fe.
When I was 30 and single, I considered taking a vacation to Wyoming to visit a cousin. In the Emporia Public Library, I stood in the travel section, looking for something on Wyoming. But what fell into my hands was a coffee table book about Santa Fe.
Once I opened the book’s cover, I knew immediately that I would go there. The colors pulled me in. And besides, this was the town I’d heard about all my life, one that never quite seemed real.
So I followed U.S. 56, through Dodge City and the Oklahoma Panhandle to Springer, N.M. Then I took the interstate to Wagon Mound, Las Vegas and Santa Fe.
On that vacation to New Mexico, however, I didn’t have history of the Santa Fe Trail in mind. I just went for the adventure of taking a trip alone, for the color promised in the coffee table book, and, of course, I went for the food.
At every opportunity, for three days, I ordered chiles rellenos. Except in a Santa Fe restaurant called The Shed where I enjoyed a stack of blue corn enchiladas.
Outside the historic Palace of the Governors, Native Americans displayed their silver and turquoise jewelry on blankets spread on the sidewalks. Yes, I was definitely in Santa Fe.
And my trip was perhaps more pleasant than those of earlier travelers along the trail. (No arrows were flung at me, no prairie dogs for lunch.)
Now I had a sense of completion. I had made my pilgrimage, followed the dotted line until it stopped. In Santa Fe.
“Flyover People” is online at www.flyoverpeople.net.
F Cheryl Unruh can be reached at cheryl@flyoverpeople.net.
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