Is it possible to come home and rediscover it?
When I returned to Kansas last year after almost two decades of absence, never would I have thought that learning about the place I was from would become an obsession.
Such things interested me little growing up in the Woodson and Allen County areas, so what had changed? What was different?
I suppose the obvious answer is: me.
Having studied and taught ephemeral subjects like philosophy, literature and writing, the tangibility of history had become appealing. Unlike philosophy, history gives you something to hold onto, something to grasp and even measure.
And when I took hold of “home,” or it took hold of me, it was like opening a treasure chest that had been sitting patiently, waiting for me all my life.
Places I had seen hundreds, even thousands, of times before were coming to reveal themselves in a surprisingly novel way. The space of two counties — roughly 800 square miles — had become as seemingly vast as the cosmos itself.
Not only that, but studying a place and its history or ecology can take on a “religious” dimension, akin to how the indigenous people who called Kansas home (before it was called Kansas) made telling stories about the land an integral part of the meaning and greater significance in their lives.
I was in need of healing, and the place, the land provided.
Whether it was staring at the cloudless night bursting with stars or wind-swept fields on fall afternoons, the size and scope of the prairie seemed to dwarf my problems and make them recognizable for their insignificance.
It occurred to me moreover just how much southeast Kansas has to offer, even if this recognition requires overcoming traditional notions of tourism and getting one’s hands dirty.
Our home is a place of adventures, of bravery and risk, and as such it became a challenge to prove that, no, plenty happens here and plenty has happened here in the past.
That said, it has also become apparent that rural Kansas has a history connected with loss, and therefore produces a nostalgia for glorious bygone days that we might imagine were, if not better times, simpler.
There are many still alive who can attest to this creeping movement of loss, whether they remember soda fountains and booming businesses or simply hundreds more people being involved in the daily lives of communities here.
Regardless, we find ourselves surrounded with the often-invisible vestiges of the past, and thanks to a dearth or economic development, essentially inhabit an enormous museum.
(Though it is one which actually covers only a tiny segment of time.)
I continue to be blown away by the notion that white, Christian people have only been calling this place home for about a century and a half.
