I Like to travel, in fact you could say I love to travel. The destination isn’t particularly important to me. Granted, I do have some preferred destinations, but my enjoyment derives as much from “the trip” as the final destination. I like driving. Aside from the physical aspect of “driving” my car, thrill of discovery is invigorating and I have learned that little discoveries are just as rewarding as big ones.
During the summer of 2008 Camilla and I put about 5000 miles under the wheels of our 11 year old car. Along with our grandson Cole we explored a lengthy swath of the Heartland…from Indiana we crossed the prairie state of Illinois, pausing at the Mississippi then onward through Iowa, and Nebraska. Through Nebraska we followed the general route of the Oregon Trail trying to imagine what those crossing the great plains in 1849 must have seen and felt.
This would be the place to pause for a brief editorial. Where we crossed the Prairie state of Illinois there was little evidence of the lush tall grass prairies that once extended from the Wabash River bottoms of western Indiana to the Mississippi and beyond. Where emigrants of 1849 crossed a vast grassland beyond the Mississippi that extended all the way to the Rocky Mountains there is little evidence of that once treeless landscape. Nebraska is today less of a treeless landscape than it was when I passed through in 1959 as a child with my Grandparents. Today one has to drive well into western Nebraska before the trees fade away.
There is a lot of talk about the homogenization of American Culture over the past couple of generations. Most of that talk applies to things like national retail and restaurant chains. A shopping mall in Boise looks much like a shopping mall in Baton Rouge or Boston. From what I have seen it should also apply to what we have done to our landscape. In our drive across Nebraska there was barely any difference in the amount of timber we saw between western Indiana where I live and the eastern 2/3 of Nebraska. Yet I remembered a Nebraska with considerably fewer trees than a typical Indiana landscape. I wonder if my memory is faulty? I might have been only about 10 the last time I crossed that state but I don’t remember it looking so much like home. I’m fairly certain emigrant travelers of 1849 would not have recognized much of the landscape we found in Nebraska this summer. Perhaps there are places in Nebraska that have not become so homogenized, but we did not see many of them on this trip.
As amazing as it sounds, there are a few places where you can still see traces of the old Oregon Trail. Scars, yet unhealed, in the land caused by thousands of iron clad wooden wagon wheels. Another small example of ways in which we have put our mark upon this land.
Chimney Rock, Scotts Bluff, Windlass Hill, and Ash Hollow are still easily spotted landmarks along the old Oregon Trail and the Platte River which much of the trail followed through Nebraska still winds it's way toward the sea as it did when the first settlers headed west in 1849. Although echos and reminders remain, the Great Plains have been long tamed. Fenced, plowed, and grazed and populated by towns large and small. The vast grassland full of millions of bison are but a memory today, something we can only read about and imagine.
This is the history of America, we have changed the landscape from coast to coast, we have taken vast wealth from the lands with little thought of the future. There are still public lands, and still wild places and some of those we have preserved, but it is always a fight and often preservation does not win. Not long before he left office President Obama granted National Monument status to some public lands in Utah, Bears Ears National Monument. Mining, drilling and cattle interests are hopping mad and hope that the current administration will reverse that Monument status which would allow them access to take yet more wealth from those lands and forever change the landscape there as we have allowed in so many other places. I hope those who value what we leave our grandchildren will prevail in the fight that is sure to come to Bears Ears National Monument in the near future.
