Contradictory Travels

I’ve been traveling by car through Oklahoma, Kansas, and Nebraska this week. I’ve always been drawn to bleak landscapes for some reason so driving through the vast nothingness of places like Kansas, South Dakota, and western Nebraska stirs up many different, often contradictory feelings.

My bladder forced me to take a brief respite at a rest stop in Nebraska earlier today when this inner force took control of my brain for a few minutes. Normally I treat any such interruption as a pit stop during a NASCAR race: how fast can I conceivably get this task completed and get back on the road? How much time will I lose? How fast will I have to go to make up for the lost time?

However, as I strolled out of the rest stop, I noticed a strange dichotomy: the constant, interminable roar of cars and trucks screaming down I-80 to my right and, to my left, amidst a sea of concrete and fossil fuel, a peaceful, bucolic oasis that proved to be the undoing of what, up to that point, was me making good time.

My inner force steered me away from the parking area onto a patch of soft, green grass, which led me to a trio of concrete benches. The inner force said two simple words to me: “Sit down.” So I sat down and let my eyes be drawn to the sad branches of a willow tree being whipped around in the noticeably cooler brisk autumn wind.  From those branches, my eyes went across a pasture that obviously hadn’t seen any four-legged visitors in months. The grasses bristled sharply in front of a tree line that naturally led my eyes up to an aggressive squadron of cumulus clouds that approached quickly from the north, one after another.

My inner force spoke again: “Get up and walk down to the fence row.” I did as my force suggested and was rewarded with the scent of grasses and plants. Not being a botanist, I couldn’t identify them. Hell, they could’ve been weeds for all I know but the scent was a welcome remedy to the residual odors still hanging around my nostrils from my visit to the men’s room. The hiss of tires on concrete was nearly inaudible by this time.

I turned around to walk back to the car but stopped at the bottom of a mild hill in the middle of the grass. I looked across the concrete river and saw hills of long prairie grass slowly undulating in the wind like underwater vegetation. The effect was hypnotic: contradiction right in front of me.

On a contradictory highway in NW Nebraska...

Several hours later, in northwest Nebraska, the grasses gave way to rocky ledges and stone formations. One minute I found myself in a valley surrounded by these natural walls and the next I found myself at the crest of a hill with a vista to the horizon. This bleakness has always made me think two distinct thoughts:  “How could anyone live here?” and “It would be amazing to live here!” In my head, there is a palpable hopelessness that hangs in the air here. “What do these people do” I kept asking myself. “Don’t they feel totally alone and isolated in this god-forsaken place?” I’ve never felt so depressed yet so stimulated by a place at the same time. It’s maddening.

I’m sitting in a hotel room in Chadron, NE as I write this. The view from my window is a rising prairie plain that stretches for an eternity to the west. It’s so inspiring yet so sad.

Contradictory view from a bleak hotel room...

I never want to come here again but can’t wait until I come back.

Thanks for stopping by…

Travis