Slowly, ever so slowly, the landscape is changing. The corn is still there, never fear, but as I plunge south of the Platte over these two days, the land ripples, and cattle encroach upon the monocrop dominance. My presence seems to be an even more dramatic change for these cows, as they consistently respond to my arrival by running en masse parallel to me.
I departed Kearney in the early morning, pushing a brisk pace westward. The day’s lone mini-mart was 10 miles ahead. After that, I had another 37 miles standing between my destination, Johnson Lake, and me, with no easy water points. I carried four liters from that stop, knowing I wouldn’t suffer terribly if I didn’t find any extra liters, but certainly hoping that I’d encounter at least one friendly soul.
I’ve been listening to Willa Cather as I walk through Nebraska, trying to reimagine the pioneer setting through her works. Interestingly, Cather only spent 13 years of her life in Nebraska, and more than half of those were in Lincoln. Those were formative, life-defining years, certainly–she would devote the remainder of her life to processing them, after all–but it’s still a little surprising to realize that one of the great writers of life on the prairie was there for a relatively short stretch.
Nonetheless, it’s difficult to argue that the woman who wrote this didn’t understand Nebraska: “The only thing noticeable about Nebraska was that it was still, all day long, Nebraska” (My Antonia). Even acknowledging some subtle differences–the aforementioned hills, some sunken copses, an especially lovely jaunt along the banks of a canal–this country, even more so than in Cather’s day, revels in its consistency. Row upon row upon row of corn and beans, disrupted in its symmetry only by the chaotic intrusion of the Platte River.
Given the length of Nebraska, and its appearance on my itinerary after Iowa, I have feared its redundancy most in my writing. Cather anticipates this as well: “there are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before; like the larks in this country, that have been singing the same five notes over for thousands of years” (O Pioneers). I try, everyday I try, to find a new angle, a distinct story to tell, a different way to approach one determined step after another through the maize, and yet in most regards that is the singular story. There is something beautiful here in the persistence of the landscape, in the human labor that has radically transformed such a massive stretch of the country; there is something disturbing here in the lost diversity, in the visual monotony.
I’ve seen it written elsewhere, reinforcing Cather’s observation, that Homer documented the only two kinds of human stories: the battle (Iliad) and the journey (Odyssey). Every other story told merely echoes one of those two. And admittedly, my walk to Johnson Lake was purely in the vein of the former, a forced march with a deadline. To be sure of a hot dinner at the lake, I needed to arrive by 8pm. That was doable, given the strong start, but as the afternoon wore on and the heat arrived, the near-complete lack of shade eroded my determination. When my water ran dry with five miles to go, and no viable houses appeared to go knocking for resupply, the day’s magic dimmed. I knew I would make it; five miles of thirst is hardly fatal. I just also knew it would suck.
It took a half-hour in the mini-mart to return to myself. I had a large drink, a refilled water bottle (with ice cold water, no less), and a large pizza in front of me, but I couldn’t manage a sip or a bite for a while. The liquor shelves were directly across from me, and it was a little like studying a foreign language, familiarizing myself with the strange brands and wildly divergent prices. I wondered if this was the first time that someone ever gradually regained coherence while being surrounded by alcohol.
Anyway, I survived, and I eventually stumbled over to the adjacent lake with three-quarters of a pizza. What an amazing transition–to go from 14 consecutive intense hours of walking to suddenly find myself lounging on the edge of a shimmering surface, the sun setting before me. Cather is ready to speak to this as well: “That is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great. When it comes to one, it comes as naturally as sleep” (My Antonia).
The Western-centric story of the prairie and the plains is one of transformation, of settlers who overcame great difficulty to remake a world, one of independent wealth and national development. Cather captures that initial challenge vividly, when she writes that “the great fact was the land itself, which seemed to overwhelm the little beginnings of human society that struggled in its sombre wastes. It was from facing this vast hardness that the boy’s mouth had become so bitter; because he felt that men were too weak to make any mark here, that the land wanted to be let alone, to preserve its own fierce strength, its peculiar, savage kind of beauty, its uninterrupted mournfulness” (O Pioneers). And yet, it doesn’t take long for the transformation to occur. Part II of O Pioneers highlights the accomplishment: “The rich soil yields heavy harvests; the dry, bracing climate and the smoothness of the land make labor easy for men and beasts. There are few scenes more gratifying than a spring plowing in that country, where the furrows of a single field often lie a mile in length, and the brown earth, with such a strong, clean smell, and such a power of growth and fertility in it, yields itself eagerly to the plow; rolls away from the shear, not even dimming the brightness of the metal, with a soft, deep sigh of happiness. The wheat-cutting sometimes goes on all night as well as all day, and in good seasons there are scarcely men and horses enough to do the harvesting. The grain is so heavy that it bends toward the blade and cuts like velvet.”
After a grueling first day, my departure from Johnson Lake is smooth, benefiting from a 6am coffee at the mini-mart, along with some leftover pizza. With just 19 or 20 miles ahead of me, along with the promise of a hotel room (and new shoes!), I settled into a leisurely pace and let the day unfold before me. After cutting northward through the hills, I returned to the Platte valley, surrounded once more by orderly rows of corn.
A truck pulled up beside me as I neared the river. An older gentleman greeted me with a question: “Are you following the Oregon Trail?” It’s a rare thing, to have my actions immediately identified, but he was clued in by a previous experience, some five years earlier, when two other travelers passed through the region on horseback. “My great-grandfather came here in 1878 as a homesteader, just a block over that way. We’re coming up on the 150th anniversary.” As with Cather’s pioneers, the early years were challenging, but for generations now the land has provided his family with home, livelihood, and identity. And he’s not alone. As hard as the 1980s were–”lots of people had to sell out, the interest rates hit 15% back then”–many other families with homesteading roots remain.
The day ends wonderfully early, as I stroll into Cozad a little after noon. That left me with plenty of time to visit the center, grab my shoes at the post office, eat a Blizzard, and snag some groceries–and still check into my hotel by 2pm.
The struggle is real. Many days are physically demanding, and with Wyoming looming ever closer, I know the hardest is yet to come. But the story of the trip will always be the journey, the opportunity to see the land at ground level, at a snail’s pace. One last word from Cather: “Men travel faster now, but I do not know if they go to better things” (Death Comes for the Archbishop).
