I hit the road for central Kansas with the sun already well into its descent on Friday night. A long-overdue family reunion on my father's side is this weekend.
I could have cranked up the XM radio, but chose to pray a rosary for a friend's wife, who is battling cancer, and then just observe and reflect as my journey continued.
One of the first things I noticed was how vibrant the vegetation was. It had been a rainy spring and early summer, it showed. Crops, trees, flowers - even weeds - looked robust and vivid in their greens, yellows and reds.
Puddles filled low spots in undulating fields, telling me the most recent rain had been a hearty one. Cattle and horses speckled pastures alongside U.S. 50, grazing on grass that rose well above their hooves.
U.S. 50 between Hutchinson and Stafford resembles something of a time machine for me, because I can almost sense the prairie as it was when Kansas was untamed tallgrass, with vast herds of buffalo roaming the plains.
The sporadic trees that thrust toward the sky still seem like recent interlopers, and I wonder if a wagon train will appear on the horizon. I can't help but reflect on how challenging life had to have been for settlers even after Kansas became a state, struggling to carve a life out of fertile soil and fickle seasons.
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