Up the Road

The plum bushes were at a dip in the road: a hollow.  Fifty years ago they were the only greenery on the road.  Since then a grove of cottonwood trees has sprung up. It's like they guard "the gate" to the plum bushes.   They dwarf the plum bushes; and if I did not know they were there I would have missed the plums.

After the plums were finished I would hike farther up the road.  The road began a  steady rise in elevation.  Of course, being Kansas, I am not talking about mountains.  The hills rose and rolled from there on.  They appeared as camel humps, a savory green in spring and a dusty gray green in mid summer.  

If this camel were to shake out its hair, out would fall the cactus, devils thorn, wild onions, chokeberries, and dusty tumbleweeds caught on barb wire fences.  The glue would be cow patties in various stages of freshness;  from gooey with the blue-green flies, to dried feather weight saucers.  In the ditches by the road were sunflowers happy as the mid day sun to just be alive. They crowded each other shoulder to shoulder, a choir of joy just begging me to pick.

All this I  could see from the road as I  trudged up the first hill.  I  called it , "the dinosaur hill."  As I ascended, the dirt filled ditches and shoulders began to spot with buff and cream colored spots:  limestone fragments uncovered by  the blade.  I  called it,  "the dinosaur hill" because this is where the treasure hunt began for finding prehistoric fossils embedded in the chunks of limestone buried underneath the prairie loam.

In the stones I could see clam shells and mussel shells.  I always kept my eye open, hoping to find some prehistoric monster sleeping in the stone.  I would pick up rocks to keep, only to discard as I found a new and better one.

At the top of the hill I had a view of the low lying wheat fields. In the other direction the hills, rumpled in grass, flowed like the ancient waves they were made of long ago. Here, I would stop to examine the outcroppings of limestone and catch my breath.  I would load my pockets with the best looking rocks.  I tried to imagine the ancient seas and creatures who lived in the seas.  

Inevitably it would be the low of the cattle and clink-clank of the windmill shifting in a dry wind, that would bring me back to the present and the reality of the chores calling my name.  There were the cows to call home.  With my pockets stuffed I would crawl under the barb wire fence and kris cross cattywampus across the pasture to where the cows huddled by the windmill and stock tank.  I'd call,


"Come Boss.  Come Boss", 

and like the Pied Piper I would lead the cows home to the barn, Daddy, and the milking stool.

That was not the only adventure on that Kansas dirt road.  In my mind the road was always a path to some kind of other world, either in my mind or in reality.  It was just one of many treasured playgrounds on the farm outside of Sylvan Grove, Kansas.