Last night, the skies opened up. It was thunderstorming buckets in Garden City, Kansas, as if some overzealous gardener up there was trying to reverse—overnight—the toll years of neglect had exacted on their parched patch of suburban lawn. Garden City stinks when it rains; the water chases all the worst odors out into the open.
Our belongings safely secured in the hotel room we booked after a group of Coloradans warned us the weather forecast predicted hail the size of baseballs, Helen and I realized that the van headlights were still on. We mad-dashed our way through the parking lot, searching for our lost hour (Central Time…) and our sanity, soaked to the bone. There are two kinds of people: Helen, who quickly realizes the futility of any attempt to stay dry and slows to a resigned walk in the downpour; and Anna, who keeps careening toward the hotel awning, haphazardly dodging puddles and screeching as she goes.
Consider this an obvious case of foreshadowing.
Imagine something 10x worse—this photo doesn’t do the freshly bedraggled and grimy state justice
In the morning, during the first leg, bikers and car alike encounter mud, biting flies, and newborn lakes that block all movement forward. We finally find the highway three hours later, bedraggled and grimy.
In the afternoon, Helen and I bike 30 miles of Kansas flat and hold our breaths through almost as many miles of Kansas stench. We pass a cattle feed yard, various co-op grain mills, bleating goats, and endless fields of corn. And while each catches and holds my attention, the moments don’t go anywhere—just bounce around inside my head like so many screensavers, taking up space until replacements are found. I know next to nothing about the history, economy, politics, or people of Kansas, and I’ve always been tragically unobservant of the landmarks that shape most people’s understandings of the paths and spaces that make up their lives. It’s why I have a poor sense of direction and why without a map—even in my hometown—I so often get lost.
After a stretch of red (not yellow) brick road, we arrive at our hosts’ home. Over dinner, the day unknots—becomes intelligible. I learn that meatpacking plants are major sources of income and employment in the area, though new cheese plants have opened and are starting to bring in significant truck traffic; that corn became the dominant crop only after irrigation became more widespread; that the grain mills produce cheap milo dust for cereal and construction binders across the nation. I learn that the town has a significant migrant population; that more than half of students in the district today do not identify as white; that this part of Kansas is majority politically conservative, and that politics sow not only discord and division, but also a deep sense of isolation for some people who were born and raised here, who raised their own children here.
Tonight, getting ready for bed, I map the conversation back onto the moments bouncing around inside my head. There’s a cohesion that wasn’t there before: a sense of place.
Anna
P.S. Rest break sequence: Alex practicing for the circus
