I finally had to depart from the easy road in the name of staying faithful to Lummis's tramp--with a nice payoff. Earlier I reported that I-70 follows Lummis's Tramp through Kansas. When I pulled out the map after my last update, I realized that was not so for the rest of the state and into Colorado. Places like Wallace, Kit Carson, and Boyero, tiny towns Lummis mentions, are not along I-70, I have to get on Route 40 to pass these places.
I'm no longer navigating by GPS, but by old fashioned map. I have to take a road south to get to Route 40, which I do. Eventually, just like the map says, I get to the Route 40 junction. Something that excites me and tells me I'm on the right path, is that this junction also coincides exactly with a railroad crossing. And then thrillingly, for me anyway, is that these tracks parallel route 40 closely. I can see the tracks rolling past me as I drive. At last I feel I am really re-tracing the tramp, literally. Me, driving along the tracks at 50 mph that he walked, seeing exactly what he saw. Additional confirmation comes when the railroad tracks and Route 40 enter, like clockwork, the towns Lummis mentions in his Letters.
Almost as soon as I depart Colby, Kansas (with the Starbucks) where I stayed the night before, the landscape begins to open up considerably, and just becomes more empty the further west you go. At I'm driving west I'm continually amazed at the increasing emptiness and openness of the landscape.
But it's not boring, it's not depressing, it's so desolate it's thrilling. I think part of the reason is all this time as you're heading west you are slowly gaining elevation, so at over 4,000 ft it's actually quite high compared to the plains of say, Illinois. The air seems rarified. The clouds of earlier in the day have disappeared and the mellow winter sun is out, giving the air this ethereal tint. The landscape seems so dramatic. Every spot, every vista seems like the location of a Hollywood western. I don't know if it's the landscape itself that's so dramatic, or it's just that the landscape is a foil making everything that occurs in it more poignant, like a stage that makes the everyday and mundane seem extraordinary.As I head west on Route 40 I have this feeling that I am going somewhere, that something great lays ahead of me. I'm so eager to get there I want to lay on the gas. I want to get to First View and see if I can see Pike's Peak. But I drive 10 mph below the speed limit. Route 40 is just a small two lane ribbon through the plain, no shoulder. The speed limit is 65, so you can make good time if you want to, but there seem to be a lot of trucks with wide loads. One truck in particular carrying two parallel bales of hay side by side sticking frighteningly out of the sides scares the crap out of me.
On this drive the Colorado/Kansas border just seems like an arbitrary line, the two regions, Eastern Colorado and Western Kansas are the same thing. I doubt there is much more out here than when Lummis came through, if anything there may be less because the railroad passing through is less important. Many of the towns seem to have no commercial enterprises open to the public-- no restaurant, no place to get a cup of coffee, although many do, I had a burger at Cheyenne Wells Colorado near First View. Many of them are just a grain elevator, a clutch of houses, and maybe a couple other agricultural buildings. A few have Post Offices: a small trailer-sized building with a satellite dish (the one I went into had no postal worker on duty, though you could still access PO boxes). Generally there are trees in the towns (absent from the rest of the landscape). The trees seem kind of like fortifications built up around the small collection of houses.
The larger towns like Kit Carson have a couple tiny motels, gas stations, some car service stations (often you can't tell if they're still in business or went under decades ago), and a small neighborhood. When I parked my car in Kit Carson there were a couple dogs walking around in the street, eyeing me attentively. But there was something very romantic about the town. It really seems like a small oasis completely surrounded by the empty high plains. It seems like a place from a different time. Almost every sign is old, there aren't retail chains out here. A lot of the houses are in major disrepair, but people seem to be living in them, but others are pretty, well kept houses, some all brick. Really old broken down cars from the 50's or 60's just sitting in a backyard is not an uncommon sight.
Let me get back on track. About 10 miles past Cheyenne Wells is "First View", supposedly the very first point at which you can spot Pike's Peak (on a clear day), one of the tallest mountains in the front range, 150 miles away. Previously I was confused about whether this was a town itself, a lookout, or what. Lummis reports a section house and a couple buildings here. Today, First View is just a sign that says "First View". There is an old dilapidated tower-like structure near by, and I was trying to surmise whether this had some agricultural purpose or was meant to facilitate said View.
I'm sorry to report that I, like Lummis, could not see any distant peaks at First View. Maybe if I knew what I was looking for, or exactly where to look on the horizon I could have picked it out. But I was also hindered by the fact that I couldn't stop the car, because there were very few turn-offs where I could be assured of enough room to pull a u-turn with the trailer.
I was filled with anticipation to begin closing in on Denver and the front range of the Rockies out of this vast high plain, but amazingly this openess and emptiness seems to last right up until you hit Denver. Denver seems like a massive, unexpected oasis. I arrived at night so I couldn't get a good view of the landscape. I'm in Boulder now in the company of my kind hosts, looking forward to exploring more of Denver, a city that impressed Lummis for its size and modernity in 1884.
Glad to be here,
SHU
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