I Wish I Could Go Back to Kansas - Part 2

 Returning to Kansas for a few days of exploration and photography has become a sort of "Bucket List" (or Geo-Bucket List) goal. 

As recounted in Part 1, since 2014, I have been immersed in a writing project, with the first goal being the production of an interesting narrative about two "crossroads events" in 1973 and 1974.  These events were a 1973 Western family vacation (the last one for the four of us - Dad, Mom, sister, and me), followed by my 1974 Western road trip with my college roommate. 

Both of these events were influential towards my moving 1500 miles from home in 1977, to attend graduate school in El Paso, Texas.  Events that followed included meeting my first wife (1983), my first marriage (1984), adopting our daughter (1986), graduating from the University of Texas-El Paso with a Master of Science degree in Geology (1990), and us moving back to my native Georgia (1991).  

The genesis of this project was "decadal anniversary-induced nostalgia", triggered by the 40th anniversary of the 1974 road trip, and continuing through a time of significant life changes, career plans/expectations fizzling out (2013), being widowed (2015), my daughter's family moving to Phoenix (2015), being given a used Digital SLR camera by a friend and then buying a new Pentax K50 (2015), engaging in three Atlanta-to-Phoenix (and back) driving trips (2015 and 2016), meeting my second wife (2016), my daughter's family moving back to Georgia (2017), and getting remarried (2017).

  

As recounted in Part 1 of this posting, the 2014 rereading of William Least Heat-Moon's "Blue Highways" inspired my writing efforts.  Other of Heat-Moon's books subsequently read and enjoyed included (in no particular order) "Here, There, Elsewhere"; "Roads to Quoz"; "Writing Blue Highways" and in 2019, "PrairyErth" and "River-Horse".  Of these books, "PrairyErth: A Deep Map", published in 1991, is the most profound in terms of its quadrangle-by-quadrangle detailed analysis of Chase County, Kansas.  As defined by Wikipedia, a "deep map" is "a map with greater information than a two-dimensional image of places, names, and topography."  

Figure 1.  Monument on I-70.  Image by B. Masterson

Chase County, roughly between Topeka and Wichita, is within the "Flint Hills Ecoregion" and hosts the Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve.  Heat-Moon's intense deep-map coverage of the geology, ecology, history, culture, botany, and geography of Chase County and the uniqueness of the Tallgrass Prairie Ecosystem is credited by some as drawing the attention needed to create the National Preserve.  Formerly covering an estimated expanse of 400,000 square miles, agriculture has inadvertently reduced the Tallgrass Prairie Ecosystem to a fragmented remnant of what it once was.

The major hurdle to bringing this writing project to fruition is fashioning a suitable format. Adversarial considerations include; 1) The road trip took place 45 years ago; 2) There was no travel log kept, as we were 20 years old and not given to thinking about legacies and such; 3) Memories are fading; 4) There are few - if any - surviving Kodak Instamatic photos; and 5) An attempt was made to save the marked 1974 AAA maps, but that ended with a 2011 home renovation when the maps were inadvertently discarded.

As stated in Part 1, if I can achieve a satisfactory solution to the "Kansas chapter" of my narrative, it should serve as a template for the remainder of the recounting of the 4-week, 8800-mile journey.  As current conditions stand, in terms of health concerns, family obligations, and finances, a retracing of this route does not appear likely in the near future.  Though a "virtual journey" format with flashbacks and vignettes may serve the purpose.