In the Nebraska Forest
24/07/12 03:44
I often get the first and/or last line of my daily blog in my head during the preceding day. Often I try to come up with a starting line before I go to bed, so that I will have a direction to go when I get up to write in the morning. Yesterday, I came up with a starting line that went something like this: “One way to tell that I am on vacation is that my route goes far off of the beaten path.” The problem with this line, is that I am not sure that the simple fact that I’m off of the most traveled roads is any indication that I am on vacation. During my regular job, I find ways to explore some of the back roads and byways of our area. I’ll cut across Boulder Hill to Keystone for a meeting in Custer, or sometimes I take the Victoria Lake Road to get to Taylor Ranch Road when visiting church members. I’ve been on the gravel road from Bridger to Cherry Creek and taken the dirt road from Pine Ridge to Chadron as a part of my official duties.
So maybe it is just part of my nature to take the back roads when I travel. At any rate, we decided to come home by a different route when we left Warrensburg yesterday. We took highway 50 to Lawrence and then drove down Interstate 70 to Topeka, where we headed north on highway 75 to Nebraska City. Then we cut over to Lincoln and took Interstate 80 to Grand Island and from there headed up Nebraska 2 through Broken Bow towards Thedford.
We camped last night in the Nebraska National forest, seeking refuge from the 103 degree heat. We paid the extra $3 for an electrical hookup so we could run the air conditioner to cool down the camper. The cicadas in the cedar trees tried to sing us to sleep, accompanied by the passing coal trains, and we had the hum of the air conditioner to add to the symphony of sounds. It wasn’t exactly the same as camping out without all of the amenities, but we were comfortable, which is worth a lot when it is so hot outside.
There are a lot of choices in different routes to take to get from the Kansas City area home. We could have stayed on Interstate 80 to Ogallala and then cut up through Alliance to head home. We can stay on the road we’re on through Thedford to Alliance and then cut up through Chadron. Or we can head straight north through the sandhills to Valentine. From there we can cut across to Chadron, or go up to Mission and take highway 18, or head all the way to Murdo and take Interstate 90. Or we could cut across through the Badlands on highway 44. There are lots of choices. Any way that we go will only be a few more miles than any other way and since we are traveling at a top speed of 65 with the camper and a trailer with two boats, we don’t save time by taking the Interstate. One way or the other, we’ll be home this evening and ready to start back to work tomorrow.
It has been a good vacation. I don’t know if I could have imagined how satisfying it might be to spend most of a vacation helping our children fix up their home. We painted, reinforced a deck, sanded and did a lot of outdoor work in the 100+ temperatures. But we also went out for some meals, cooked some delicious things on the Barbecue and visited with our daughter and son in law. And we slept late some mornings and took time to explore some of central Missouri. It was a different kind of vacation, but a good one all the same.
It seems strange for a couple of kids from Montana to be camping in the Nebraska National Forest. “Nebraska” and “forest” don’t naturally fit together in the vocabulary of people who didn’t grow up on the plains. The truth is that there wasn’t much of a forest here in the 19th century. President Theodore Roosevelt established the Nebraska Sandhills as a protected area in 1902 and agriculturalists from the University of Nebraska began to experiment with trees to stabilize the Sandhills. The attempt to farm the hills ended in dismal failure for the homesteaders. Noting that the national forests were being decimated by unregulated timber cutting, forest fires, and other results of little or no management, the scientists began to develop a tree nursery to provide seedlings for reforestation of some of the nation’s woodlands. Here at what is today the Besser Recreation Complex, on the banks of the Middle Loupe River, they established the first tree nursery in the national forest system. The Nebraska National Forest is the largest hand-planted forest in the United States. The treesd stabilized the land from excessive erosion and provide a respite from the heat of the plains in the summer. It is one of the few cool places to rest between Lincoln and Rapid City.
It is hard, however, for someone with my personality to avoid making fun of the concept of the Nebraska National Forest. A National grassland I understand, but a forest in Nebraska? Yet here we are in a series of wooded hills with a sandy-bottomed river running through the campground.
The truth is that there is something strangely natural about this forest. I seems as if it belongs here. The people who planted it were wise enough to select varieties of trees that have been surviving, even thriving, in this harsh environment. And interacting with our world is what we humans do, whether it is watering our garden or damming up a river to make a lake. Yes, there was a time when there was no forest here. There also was a time when there were no giant lakes in the middle of Missouri. We human beings are a part of our environment. Not every decision we make or action we take is in the best interests of the planet, or even our own survival, but we are builders and planters and participants in the natural world.
So we are camped in this forest, grateful for the shade and the smell of the cedars. It is a resting place on our way home. And when we get home we will try to be wise stewards of the little bit of ground that is our yard. And, like the people who founded the Nebraska National Forest, we are likely to plant a few more trees.
So maybe it is just part of my nature to take the back roads when I travel. At any rate, we decided to come home by a different route when we left Warrensburg yesterday. We took highway 50 to Lawrence and then drove down Interstate 70 to Topeka, where we headed north on highway 75 to Nebraska City. Then we cut over to Lincoln and took Interstate 80 to Grand Island and from there headed up Nebraska 2 through Broken Bow towards Thedford.
There are a lot of choices in different routes to take to get from the Kansas City area home. We could have stayed on Interstate 80 to Ogallala and then cut up through Alliance to head home. We can stay on the road we’re on through Thedford to Alliance and then cut up through Chadron. Or we can head straight north through the sandhills to Valentine. From there we can cut across to Chadron, or go up to Mission and take highway 18, or head all the way to Murdo and take Interstate 90. Or we could cut across through the Badlands on highway 44. There are lots of choices. Any way that we go will only be a few more miles than any other way and since we are traveling at a top speed of 65 with the camper and a trailer with two boats, we don’t save time by taking the Interstate. One way or the other, we’ll be home this evening and ready to start back to work tomorrow.
It seems strange for a couple of kids from Montana to be camping in the Nebraska National Forest. “Nebraska” and “forest” don’t naturally fit together in the vocabulary of people who didn’t grow up on the plains. The truth is that there wasn’t much of a forest here in the 19th century. President Theodore Roosevelt established the Nebraska Sandhills as a protected area in 1902 and agriculturalists from the University of Nebraska began to experiment with trees to stabilize the Sandhills. The attempt to farm the hills ended in dismal failure for the homesteaders. Noting that the national forests were being decimated by unregulated timber cutting, forest fires, and other results of little or no management, the scientists began to develop a tree nursery to provide seedlings for reforestation of some of the nation’s woodlands. Here at what is today the Besser Recreation Complex, on the banks of the Middle Loupe River, they established the first tree nursery in the national forest system. The Nebraska National Forest is the largest hand-planted forest in the United States. The treesd stabilized the land from excessive erosion and provide a respite from the heat of the plains in the summer. It is one of the few cool places to rest between Lincoln and Rapid City.
It is hard, however, for someone with my personality to avoid making fun of the concept of the Nebraska National Forest. A National grassland I understand, but a forest in Nebraska? Yet here we are in a series of wooded hills with a sandy-bottomed river running through the campground.
So we are camped in this forest, grateful for the shade and the smell of the cedars. It is a resting place on our way home. And when we get home we will try to be wise stewards of the little bit of ground that is our yard. And, like the people who founded the Nebraska National Forest, we are likely to plant a few more trees.