At last!!!! Back in Nebraska....

Its been a while, but we're back.  It was an exhausting adventure back east, and in case you lost the thread of where we have been going in the midst of all of that excitement, we're  in Nebraska on that 10 day amble between the Berkshire Hathaway convention in Omaha and Chase's high school graduation in Auburn.

Nebraska, home of the sand hills,

Nebraska, where the Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroad line seems to crisscross the state where ever you look, carrying coal from Wyoming and everything else that seems to pass through Nebraska as it makes its way back and forth across the country.

I don't know if its just too good to be true, or is it just so alien to a New Yorker, that it just seems like paradise, but there seems to be an emotional connection and a sense of "we're all it it together" that Nebraskans have for each other that you don't seem to find back east.  Jackie said this is because there are so few people out here who are part of a  subconscious network of interdependence  on each other, friend or stranger, to be there for one another in this vast sea of grass and uncertainty.  It grew from a prairie ethos well described in Willa Cather's books which give a real feel for the generations of pioneers whose existence was truly tenuous and at the mercy of untamed forces greater than their resources that demanded an organic interdependence to survive which remains in their DNA, unspoken but visceral even now.   So unlike the way our east coast population density has evolved a need to isolate and encapsulate to survive.

Everybody in Nebraska seems to wave to each other, mainly from their cars and pick-ups, whether they know you or not.  In our rental Ford Focus with Iowa plates, we were welcome strangers now part of the whole.  It didn't take long for me to start waving back, once I looked behind me and saw no one was there and realized that they were waving at me, and although it was painful at first, but I soon began to initiate the occasional spontaneous wave myself.  It felt right.

There was a warmth and sincerity in that open hand and open heart that seemed real and unmistakable to this cynic from back east who had been told by a thousand New Yorkers with distracted, unsmiling faces to "have a nice day" with all the warmth and and sincerity of someone telling me to go screw myself.

Anyway, the return to the Nebraska trip seems to coincide with our return from South Dakota with a short side trip into Wyoming that requires a blog entry of its own.

Crossing over from Wyoming heading to Scottsbluff and beyond, we were met with this "welcome" to Nebraska sign.  As I travel through more and more of the US, I am often disappointed by the generic and boring signs states put up to inform you.  New York is one of the worst offenders in terms of totally a uninspiring and utilitarian obligatory effort at letting you know you are there.  This is not much better.  Come on Cornhuskers, you can do better!!! 

At this point, we are on highway 92 as you can see.  It parallels the Oregon Trail in this section of Nebraska (as you can tell by the covered wagon on the sign) where the historic point of interest is Chimney Rock which you can see from anywhere around here.  But route 26 does take you to Bayard.

As you can tell, I do have a thing for signs.  These signs are not great, not really even blogworthy but they are part of a narrative, providing a sense of place, however lame, so here is a photo of the real thing...

That's Chimney Rock out in the distance framed by the obligatory windmill which is ubiquitous in Nebraska, used to pump water using wind power.  Chimney Rock was an important landmark for the pioneers traveling in wagons along the Oregon Trail and a source of great excitement and false hope for them.  After traveling for an interminable period of time across the mind numbing tedium of the praries, insect and disease infected plains, cold, wet, muddy, at the mercy of the elements, barely sheltered, bored and afraid to the point of insanity, sniped at by indians, bandits and going through an unimaginable hell in the middle of nowhere, Chimney Rock offered some sense of something familiar, non-prarie, false hope, anything to give these wretched survivors of the first half of the trip something to be glad of.  The knowledge that they were more than half way there and would only have to endure their pain and terrors for a few more months, if they lived through the next season.  Being out there virtually alone together, it is truly unimaginable what these poor pioneers risked and went through for the promise of unknown and unknowable.  There was nothing romantic about this journey.  They left much behind, and loved ones in shallow graves along the way.  God bless those brave souls who made the trip and lived and whose families continue to inhabit our great plains.

                                                                    Pablo