A new book examines the state of Kansas from a natural perspective. The book, published by University Press of Kansas, is called In the Country of the Kaw, by James Locklear. Commentator Rex Buchanan says anyone interested in the natural world and the Kansas River basin should check it out.
(TRANSCRIPT)
I’ve long been bothered by artificial governmental boundaries. Like, say, the boders of Kansas. Kansas is basically a rectangle defined by lines of latitude and longitude, except for one small nod to nature, the little squiggle in the northeastern where the state is bounded by the Missouri River. Many our counties are built the same way: squares. Only a few have borders determined by river courses.
That’s just one reason why I was glad to see a new book called In the Country of the Kaw by James Locklear, published by the University Press of Kansas. Locklear focuses on the drainage basin of the Kansas River; in other words, all the land that drains into the Kansas, or Kaw.
That watershed runs from the confluence of the Kaw and the Missouri rivers in the east, all the way out to the High Plains of eastern Colorado and far western Nebraska.
Locklear knows some things about this part of the world. He grew up in Kansas City, and worked at the Dyck Arboretum in Hesston (just south of the Kaw watershed) and a botanical garden in Omaha, just to its north. He’s ranged throughout the Kaw basin, from the well-watered forests in the east to the dry shortgrass prairies out west. He seems to love it all.
And his reflections about this place ought to be required reading for everybody who lives in the Kaw basin. He writes about the natural world, especially its geology and animals. Not too surprisingly, he is maybe most interested in plants. He describes the grasses and flowers. Here’s his description of cottonwood trees: “Mature cottonwoods can be a bit disheveled, with broken limbs and gaps in the crown and trunks missing big chunks of bark. I’ve seen many glorious cottonwoods, but some remind you of running into that old friend who has lived a very hard life or maybe some very bad choices.”
Locklear goes beyond natural history, writing also about the people and the small towns of the region. Especially touching is his discussion of lilacs planted around the country-cemetery graves of three children from the same family, all of whom died in October 1876. And he cites some of the great writers that this area has produced, like Willa Cather and Mari Sandoz and Loren Eisley, and others, like Hal Borland and Ted Kooser, who ought to be better known.
I was familiar with much of what Locklear covers on the Kansas side of the border. But I knew less about the part of the basin that covers southern Nebraska. My ignorance of of southern Nebraska, even though it’s nearby, is another example of how artificial state lines, like the boundary between Kansas and Nebraska, divide us.
I wish we looked at the world in terms of natural regions, based on geology or drainage basins. We’d see things differently, I’ll bet, and maybe take better care of the natural world. Locklear’s book is a good way to start seeing things that way.
Gary Snyder, a California poet, once wrote, “Stay together, learn the flowers, go light.” Snyder’s great-grandmother is buried in a pasture in Ellsworth County, Kansas. In the land of the Kaw. ####
Commentator Rex Buchanan is a writer, author, book reviewer and former director of the Kansas Geological Survey at the University of Kansas. He lives in Lawrence.