flyover People
Cheryl Unruh
Originally published 01:56 p.m., July 8, 2008
Updated 01:56 p.m., July 8, 2008
Editor’s note: This is an encore column originally published in June 2003.
The other day as I drove toward Olpe, it occurred to me that here in eastern Kansas, we’re a little short on vanishing points.
Highways and dirt roads disappear behind a slight rise or a hill, occasionally a curve, before they have any chance of vanishing in the distance.
The landscape of Western Kansas, however, is a different story: flat and flatter.
When I was 8, Ruth Deckert, my Sunday school teacher, gave art lessons to my 10-year-old brother and me at her farmhouse kitchen table. Ruth explained the concept to us.
“When two parallel lines, one on either side of you, meet at the horizon, that is called a vanishing point,” she said.
With a sketch, Ruth showed us that these parallel lines, such as ditches, the edges of a road, fences on either side, do converge way off in the distance.
My question was: If I sent my obnoxious brother down that road, would he, too, vanish?
After that art lesson, I noticed as I looked down the mile roads in Barton County, that the fence posts on either side of the road did aim toward a point, far away, one dot in the center of a picture.
This concept works on flat land and Western Kansas is an ideal place to look toward the horizon and watch roads disappear, left and right.
Although the High Plains and all of Kansas is on a gradual slope, rising in altitude to meet the base of the Rocky Mountains, much of the land in the southwestern part of the state is checkerboard flat. It’s as if the ceaseless wind blew away the rises and falls of the earth and the summer sun ironed out the remaining wrinkles.
Western Kansas is all about distance: distance between towns, between farms, between people. Some counties near the Colorado border average only a few people per square mile.
Out there, solitude is a survival skill. Rural residents know that there may be days between conversations. And forgetting something at the grocery store 30 miles away means doing without.
Birds fly for miles between branches. They’ll land on a scrappy tree under which a handful of cattle huddle in the shade.
On this endless plane, small towns are marked by grain elevators which, from above, look like white pins stuck in the rectangular map. These rural monuments can bee seen for miles.
Elevators give the traveler something to focus on, a target, a town (and perhaps a public restroom — few and far between in these parts.)
Sometimes on the lonesome Kansas Highway 156 between Larned and Garden City, you might gallop along for a half an hour without seeing another car. The irony is that with no visual obstructions such as hills or curves, there are also no vehicles that need passing.
On this level land, it feels as if you are standing in a snow globe. The blue sky is an overhead dome and the line of horizon forms a complete circle — with you at the center.
In this vacant space, peripheral vision is ensured. Without turning our heads, we can see beside ourselves, behind us. Everything is in plain sight.
Out west, if you look down any mile road, you’ll see that it aims toward a tiny point in the distance. The roadway appears to vanish. All around you, fields stretch to the horizon, where even the planet fades away, curving into itself.
And that brother of mine, now grown and no longer obnoxious, did disappear on these Kansas roads. He drove north, then west, and made his home in Alaska.
It’s odd, out on the flat land where there is nowhere to hide, that this is the place where people and things vanish right before our eyes.
“Flyover People” is online at www.flyoverpeople.net.
• Cheryl Unruh can be reached at cheryl@flyoverpeople.net.
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