Post 13

Cool tree I saw otw to Ryan's house

    Today I went for a bike ride. It wasn’t very far, pretty much just to Allen Press & back, and I didn’t get any pictures because the route itself was so mundane. But the ride wasn’t mundane in the least. I was scorchin’ down Connecticut Street like a bat outta hell. Keeping up with cars, wind at my back, legs turning like pistons. I mean really, I felt superhuman.
    There’s no better feeling than roaring down a road on a fixed gear bike in perfect weather. Absolutely nothing compares. It's sad that most people in this world go their whole lives not knowing it.

    A few weeks ago I went to Colorado, with my family. The Rockies were okay, but I’m an Appalachian boy. It seems so dry and cold in Colorado. I’m glad I went, I guess. I’d like to go back alone or something, and go into the backcountry. It’d probably be better there. We went to Garden of the Gods, which was pretty and all, but it kind of sucked. There were people everywhere and noise and trash and pavement and I just didn’t like it. Maybe I was just in a bad mood that day, I dunno.

    Going through the plains of Eastern Colorado was my favorite part. Eastern Colorado is so empty. I love it. I saw pronghorns for the first time. Here really felt “wild” which I suppose is a silly thing to say given that everywhere is wild. There was little farming and just tons of open land, which changed immediately when the border was crossed into Kansas. 

    Kansas has more irrigation from the Ogallala aquifer, while Colorado doesn’t, and not having irrigation limits what can be grown. There is dryland corn though, I saw some of that being grown in CO. The thing that the KS farmers have to worry about is eventually the Ogallala aquifer will run dry, within my lifetime probably. And climate change will cause the high plains to be even drier. So something will change.

Far East Colorado

Pronghorn! (I was in a moving car, forgive the photo quality)

        The solution that would be best for the environment is just buying up huge tracts of land and letting it turn into prairie, and having a big preserve. This would be great, but I don’t think on the scale some people propose. There’s people who live here and have lived here for generations, who I don’t think should just be asked to leave. If some can be turned into more national grassland though I’m all for it. Hunters, in particular, would really benefit from that. Hunting in western Kansas can be hard because of the lack of public land. 

Scott County (Old photo, I just thought it fit)

    

    So it's a little bit tough, figuring out what is to be done to protect livelihoods in western Kansas, but something will need to change. However, dryland farming can be very successful. Native Americans survived for thousands of years farming in very dry areas. Farmers in the US today farm in areas like the high desert that get less than 10 inches of rain per year, without aquifers. Their yields are probably less though.

    Depletion of the Ogallala aquifer will be a bummer.

    As I am finishing up this blog post I can hear frogs in my backyard for the first time this year. They aren't the first frogs I've heard, that would be the boreal chorus frogs. They start singing when it's still winter. I heard some in the ICL Lawrence restoration area in early March. I don't actually know what kind of frogs live in my pond. I'm not great at identifying frogs. I also saw a barred owl tonight.

 

My Owl Friend