Sunday Drive on a Friday Night

 

We took a "Sunday drive" last Friday night.  

The term "Sunday drive" originated from leisurely car drives taken on Sundays in the early to mid-20th century as a form of cheap entertainment. That just happens to be the time I was a kid growing up on a Central Kansas farm. I know about "Sunday drives" firsthand as a kid sitting in the backseat of a car while my dad sang songs like "Tumbling Tumbleweeds" or "Mairzy Doats." Those - plus "I'm An Old Cowhand" - were also part of the sound track of our trips to visit my grandparents in Sublette. 

If you look up the definition of "Sunday drives," it says that initially, these drives were a form of recreation with no specific destination or time constraints. Over time, the term "Sunday driver" has evolved to describe someone who drives slowly, cautiously or inexpertly, often associated with inattentive drivers. Alternatively, it can mean "those who take their time to enjoy the scenery."

Since the only living things we saw on our trek off the beaten path were grazing cattle, we didn't bother any other drivers on our foray down country roads. So I guess, in this case, we'll stick with the definition of "those who take their time to enjoy the scenery."

We ate supper at Sylvia's Oasis restaurant after a fellow golfer recommended the Mexican food there to Randy. On the way home, we took a detour to the Ninnescah Pasture. Randy had been there more recently than I had. One summer when we were still actively farming, we took more trips down that road than any of us would have liked. There was a group of cows and calves that were determined to find the proverbial "greener pastures." No matter what we did, they would not stay in, so we were on 4-wheelers rounding them up more times than either of us wanted. (That group of escapees eventually ended up at the sale barn.) 

Anyway, it was nice to take a leisurely trip down the road - with no purpose in mind, other than checking out the water flow in the Ninnescah ... 

Looking east at the bridge

 

Looking west at the bridge

... And "smelling the roses" - or, in this case -  the wooly verbena. 

 

The road to another familiar pasture - the Rattlesnake Pasture - used to be lined by a tunnel of cottonwood trees, a route I loved in the summer. But several years ago, those aging cottonwoods were cleared away from the road. I'm sure it made practical sense, but I still miss dodging light and shadow as we work our way down that road. I imagined Randy's predecessors 120 years ago appreciating the road less traveled as they brought cattle to the Rattlesnake pasture and then checked them throughout the summer months.

July 2013 - This was before the township tore down most of the cottonwoods along the road to the Rattlesnake Pasture.

Maybe those nostalgic memories factor into my love of a tree-lined road near the Ninnescah Pasture, where the trees still tower over the dirt road and the sun plays peekaboo among the branches.

 

 You can't beat a Sunday drive on a Friday night.

 

Look for chances to take the less-traveled roads. 

There are no wrong turns.

-- Susan Magsamen 

 

*** 

And an update on the bridge north of our house: We drove up to the bridge last evening to check out the progress. Completion is definitely closer, but the Road Closed signs remain. However, all the big equipment is gone, and the new guardrails are in place. 

On August 5, the public works guys told Randy that the bridge would be done in 2 weeks. We'll see if their prediction holds true. 

 

Grand Dame of Reno County

There's a Reno County landmark that's rooted in history - literally.

 

Those of us in 21st Century Kansas may not know much about it. There's no plaque to read, detailing the history she's quietly observed as life passes her by. Even Google doesn't share many of her secrets. And it certainly doesn't reveal her exact age. A grand dame never tells, you know. 

 

We were just glad to see her alive and still standing on a recent excursion down a rutted dirt road. On one of our many trips back from Miller Seed Farm last week, Randy requested a stop at the big cottonwood. We hadn't driven up the dirt road to see how it had fared after the howling winds had toppled our cottonwood and another storm had given a haircut to a hackberry tree in our driveway.

 

The tree - thought to be the largest Plains cottonwood in Kansas - is on a road just east of a cottonwood tunnel on 4th Avenue near Huntsville, our usual route to Hutchinson (and Miller Seed Farm). After the summer windstorms, more tree limbs had littered 4th Avenue, and county road crews had pushed debris from the tunnel of trees into a neighboring field, so we speculated that the mammoth cottonwood might have gotten an unwanted trim, too.

 

But the gentle giant didn't seem much worse for the wear, though there were a few branches broken off its huge "wingspan."

 

It's so big you can't get the whole thing in a single snapshot. Randy tried to demonstrate the massive trunk with his outstretched hands.

"It's a darn big tree," Jim Smith, former director at Dillon Nature Center in Hutchinson, said in an article several years ago in The Hutchinson News. I'm glad he did the measuring because we didn't come prepared, even to measure the trunk and certainly not to scale its height. It measures more than 28 feet around, 96 feet tall and has a spread of about 110 feet.  

 

 

Early Kansas settlers found the native cottonwood trees as they arrived from the eastern U.S. The wide Kansas prairie was often foreign and intimidating to settlers moving west from the Ohio Valley, the Appalachian Mountains or New England. The landscapes they had left back home were covered with trees that provided wood for building homes, fuel for cooking, fuel to warm the hearth during a harsh winter and shade to protect them from a hot summer sun. Following the Oregon and Santa Fe trails west, trees were in very short supply.

When a cottonwood tree was spotted, thoughts of shade, water, wood and back home filled the minds of weary travelers. The cottonwood gave those traveling through the state a respite from the summer sun and the courage to continue west.

When the Kansas Legislature chose the cottonwood (Populus deltoides) as the state tree in 1937, the proclamation read:

"Whereas, if the full truth were known, it might honestly be said that the successful growth of the cottonwood grove on the homestead was often the determining factor in the decision of the homesteader to 'stick it out until he could prove up on his claim'; and Whereas, The cottonwood tree can rightfully be called 'the pioneer tree of Kansas.' "

4th Street cottonwoods in winter

 

They are like the old family patriarch - tall, stately, but maybe a little rough around the edges after years of standing through the changing seasons. Many a country road is lined with these big old trees, whose shimmery green leaves seem to wave a friendly greeting in the Kansas breeze. 

 

We miss our old cottonwood, but we're glad to see the matriarch of Reno County still standing. If only she could tell the tales of what she's seen and survived! 

The Secret Garden

And the secret garden bloomed and bloomed,

and every morning revealed new miracles.

Frances Hodgson Burnett from The Secret Garden

It's a secret garden hiding in plain sight. And it's in bloom yet again.

The Zenith Road is our thoroughfare to Stafford and home again. Early in our marriage, we lived in a house right along the road. But until four years ago, we didn't realize there were irises blooming under a grove of cottonwood trees, less than half a mile from that house. 

It was my sharp-eyed husband who first saw them. Every May since then, we subtly slow down as we approach the canopy of cottonwoods, glancing to the west to see if the blooms are back again.

It's like a surprise party each time they return.

As I parked in an old driveway and got out of the car, a pheasant squawked and flew away when I disturbed his afternoon nap. He startled me as much as I did him. After that, there was only the rustle of cottonwood leaves in the wind, accompanied by a bass line of tires slapping the pavement of U.S. Highway 50 only a half mile away.

Every year, I think about who might have planted this bed of irises. There's no concrete foundation, marking where a farmhouse might have been. The field to the west has long been in CRP, the brown grasses of winter still holding on while springtime blooms in this secret garden.

I stopped again as the sun was setting one day last week. The only other witnesses were swarms of mosquitoes who buzzed in my ears and came in for a landing.

Soon, the irises will fade again like the setting sun. But these blooms offer a lesson in appreciating life in the moment.

Last fall, Randy planted irises around our mailbox and near our front door. He knows that purple irises remind me of my Grandma Neelly's backyard, and, more importantly, evoke memories of my childhood. Not many of the irises bloomed this first spring. But to me, he couldn't have offered a more thoughtful gift.

Every happening, great and small, is a parable whereby God speaks to us, and the art of life is to get the message. 

–Malcolm Muggeridge, journalist

Down the Road to the Big Pasture

Perhaps you have noticed that even

in the very lightest breeze,

you can hear the voice of the cottonwood tree.

--Black Elk

(I can't find the original of this photo, so I have to settle for this one that I've edited. It ends up looking more like a painting.)

I've always loved the tunnel of cottonwood trees that leads to the Big Pasture. For more than 100 years, Randy's ancestors brought cattle through the tree-lined road to the pasture on the Rattlesnake Creek. The ground was purchased in 1900 for about $4 per acre by August Brinkman, a great-great-great uncle of Randy's. Originally in a tract of 1,040 acres, 560 acres remain in the Fritzemeier family.
A few years ago, this location was designated as a Farm Bureau Century Farm. Randy's Grandpa, Clarence, and two of his brothers owned the pasture together. Now Randy and his cousin, Don, are the owners.

July 2013

The road has never been the best maintained. But it was still one of my favorites because of the play of light and shadows from the mighty cottonwoods. I imagined Randy's predecessors appreciating the road less traveled as they brought cattle to pasture and then checked them throughout the summer months.

Traditionally, we don't move cattle to the Big Pasture before May 1. Randy says that's because it his grandpa and his great-uncles wanted to keep it fair for everyone. After weekend rains, we couldn't move the cattle on May Day. Instead, we were a day later in taking the mamas and babies to the summer pasture.

I knew that there were changes in the scenery. Randy had gotten a preview when they worked on rebuilding and repairing pasture fence. But this was my first venture down the road to the Big Pasture since county crews had torn out the bulk of the cottonwood trees.

The first time I went this spring, I was too busy driving a loaded trailer through the deep, muddy ruts to truly see the changes. After that first attempt down the road, we went an alternative route, adding 14 miles to each trip to the pasture but assuring that we wouldn't be stuck.

We went back later in the week to check on the cattle and the fence. It made me sad.

Only a few of the magnificent old trees survived. Most ended up in the brush piles on either side of the road.

Cottonwoods always make me think of the song my very first voice teacher had me sing at my very first lesson,

"I hear the cottonwoods whispering above ...

"The old hootie owl hootie-hoots to the dove ..."

(It wasn't exactly an art song, but I digress.)

The mama cows probably couldn't care less about the scenery, but this mama will miss those old cottonwoods.

They are likely much more concerned with the condition of the grass and the water in the creek. With abundant rains in the last six weeks or so, those are in good shape. We are thankful for the full creek. In the midst of a drought in 2012, there was no water there at all.

 

August 2012

It's a much prettier scene to have ripples in the creek as the water flows by.

May 2017

 

It will require some fence repair once the water goes down a bit.

But you sure can't beat the scenery when the rains have greened up the pastures and filled the creek to its banks.

From our pasture looking to the neighbor's pasture to the east.

The pairs we hauled to the pasture should have plenty to eat and drink. They arrived at the old corrals, which have been used time and time again by Randy's family.

This is the first time at the pasture for these calves, born in January and February of this year.

But maybe it's like "old home week" for their mamas as they return during their productive years to the pasture. I guess they'll show them the ropes!

It's not the bull's first rodeo at the Big Pasture either.

And they're off to greener pastures!

Hide and Seek - Pasture Version

A date to the pasture may not be wine and roses. Instead, it's wildflowers and a gulp from a dirty water jug.

And that's OK. I prefer it that way.

I was glad to check out this season's latest blooms in nature's flower shoppe. (I added the extra "p" and the "e" to make it fancy - even with a little mud on my jeans.)

An overcast morning made the yellow cone flowers and the purple woolly verbena seem even brighter against a muddled blue sky. 

The insects really liked the flowers, too, though I didn't realize it until I was back at my computer, looking at the photos.

We weren't at the pasture just to enjoy the scenery, though that was definitely a perk. Since we'd gotten rained out of wheat harvest again, we needed to check the mamas, babies and bulls at their summer "vacation spot" - the Ninnescah pasture.

You can barely see the water down in the draw. Click on any of the photos to make their bigger.

Honestly, I was starting to get a little nervous during our pasture promenade. We were certainly seeing a lot of pretty scenery. But we weren't seeing the cattle. I know the Bible tells me not to worry, but I also know that I'm an unfinished work in that particular area.

 

My thoughts were swirling with as much velocity as the wind racing past us on the 4-wheeler:

What if they got out?

What if they were stolen? 

The only "livestock" we were seeing were birds in the air and perched on top of fence posts.

We were hearing the rush of water at the dam ... but no mama cows calling to their babies.

 

By the time we reached the far end of the pasture, I could hardly enjoy the beautiful vista as we looked back to the north. 

"Aren't you getting nervous?" I asked Randy.
"No, not yet," he replied. "There are plenty of places to hide."

Yes, there were.

At first, they were barely discernible in the dark shadows under the trees.

Just like we humans, they were seeking a little summer relief under the shade trees.

With the rain nourishing the prairie grasses, the mamas and babies are looking sleek and well fed. The bulls were hanging out with them, too. All was well! We just had to play the farmer's version of hide and seek to find them.

I enjoyed the trip back to the pickup even more because I left my worry behind - right under those trees with the cattle.

And there's a lesson there, I suppose. If I don't let go of the worry, I can never really be present and joyful in the moment, can I?

Since the cattle were where they were supposed to be, we went to Hutchinson for a movie and supper. But on the way home, we had a detour to a big old cottonwood that Randy wanted to show me. It was during the golden hour, when the setting sun is casting beautiful light everywhere it touches.

It's less than a mile off the road we usually take to Hutchinson. It's so big I couldn't get it all in the photo frame and it dwarfed my 6'1"-tall farmer.

So our date ended where it started - on the back roads of Kansas. This time, however, we were in a car instead of on a 4-wheeler.

***

This excursion happened a week ago, June 24. This morning, skies are again overcast. We've got our fingers crossed that the rain will bypass us for a few days so our Wheat Harvest 2016 can continue.