Great Plains Studies, Center for
Date of this Version
Spring 1999
Citation
Great Plains Quarterly Vol. 19, No. 2, Spring 1999, pp. 123-26.
Abstract
I have spent a lot of time looking at Kansas maps. Once, I memorized the shapes and names of all lOS counties. On another map, I drew in red magic marker over each highway after I had traveled it, hoping, someday, to have traveled every mile in this 200-by-400-mile rectangle. A huge old school map of Kansas, published by A. J. Nystrom & Co., Chicago, hangs in my east study windows instead of curtains or shades. On sunny mornings, it glows, and since its color comes from elevation- the "3,000 to 4,000 Feet" in western Kansas, to the "Under 1,000 Feet" along the Kansas River valley and all through southeast Kansas-the map glows from its western orange, as warm as any sunset, to a salmon tan, to yellow, to bluish-green to dark green. My map is a rainbow, from a land that is not supposed to be over the rainbow. On these glowing colors, the map tells the usual things about Kansas: highways and rivers, railroad tracks and trails, counties and county seats, cities and towns and stray post offices. Occasional red italic letters brag, World's Largest Salt Mine or World's Largest Natural Gas Field. The map designates Indian reservations and sites like Carrie Nation's home. Under this large map are three others: "Average Rainfall in Inches," "Density of Population," and in "Land Use and Mineral Resources."
I love maps. They represent a paradox, being, as they are, concrete abstractions. I have looked at as many maps of Kansas as I can get hold of. I remember a NASA space photograph of Earth, with the tiny rectangle ofKansas outlined in the middle, my small home on the earth a wash of green, as in a watercolor painting. I remember a map, all in black, that showed light as it is projected at night in Kansas-from the glow of cities, to the islands of light that are turnpike rest stops, to the streetlights of small towns, to the dots of lights, like constellations, made by farm lights hung from poles in the middle of barnyards. I have seen bridge rp.aps, mineral maps, physiographic provinces maps. Maps that shade counties according to rural health statistics: population over 65, low-birth-weight babies, heart disease and cancer death rates. Maps that show water both above and below the surface of the earth. Vegetation maps and maps that chart the progress of railroad development. Maps that show ethnic settlement patterns and the density of hogs, chickens, cattle, and horses. All these maps, of course, try to describe, try to parallel, try to be, somehow, Kansas. Together, they exist in my mind, as Kansas exists in my mind, both a reality and a representation.
When I think about maps, I think about the opening of William Stafford's poem "Fiction": "We would get a map of our farm as big / as our farm .... " After all, that is the goal of any Kansas map: to make something representational that matches the reality that is Kansas. Once I tried to see Kansas as a map, and I flew over it in a small plane. I wanted to test my imagined map of Kansas, to see if it was as big as the real Kansas. And all through those flights I kept having the strong sensation that the Kansas land-with its highways, rivers, towns, and cities-looked exactly like I thought it would from the air. It matched the map in my head.
Why? Well, I have spent hours traveling the state time and again, taking different highways, crossing rivers, coming to the tops of hills and looking miles in the distance, memorizing both the distance and litany of towns along highways. For example, I need no map to tell me, when I'm on my way to Dodge City, that the next grain elevator after Great Bend will say Pawnee Rock. I have climbed on the rock and looked for miles over the Arkansas River valley there, as have thousands of others: Native Americans searching for buffalo or enemy; travelers on the Santa Fe Trail, who used it as both landmark and visual enhancer; soldiers stationed at nearby Fort Larned, out scouting to the southeast; the early settlers, who quarried the rock, cutting it down to its current size; and travelers, like me, who go to the small sandstone building, constructed by the Work Progects Administration, to sit in the sun and see what they can see.
Comments
Copyright 1999 by the Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln