Oil & Ag

I saw my first pumpjacks in Marion County, Kansas just after leaving the Tallgrass Prairie. The “nodding donkeys” as they’re also called, increased as I drove west. By Ness County, every field boasted one. Whatever other crop they were raising, they were raising oil too. Ness City, the county seat is a windswept town. Six blocks of Main Street are paved in brick and wide enough to park cars head in on both sides without interrupting traffic.

I stopped for gas, not sure when I’d next have the opportunity. The woman at the pump ahead of me noted my plates: “Massachusetts? How’d you end up here?” She was born on the Vinyard, turns out, and still had family out on the Cape. She was sick about the thought of oil reaching those beaches. Her son eyed me incredulously as if he’d never envisioned his mother as a child.

I turned north on Rte 283 and headed out past oil supply contractors and well drillers, past the bones of old pumpjacks and lines of new ones ready to take their place.

283 is a scenic route up through the Smoky Valley. Like the other “blue highways” I’d traveled today, the speed limit was sixty and the road straight as the corn rows it bordered. But soon the topography shifted slightly, small crags rose above the surrounding fields and creeks carved into them. Where land held native vegetation, it was sparser and drier than that of eastern Kansas.

I pulled into a crossroad, well graded but unpaved and cut the engine. I first noticed the wind, constant. A few barn swallows chattered, but underneath was silence. I wanted to walk, feel the wind on my face and puzzle out this landscape. A nighthawk perched on a fence post and opted for camouflage rather than flight. A lark sparrow landed on the barbed wire and sent me scouring my western bird book.

Torn between this spare and lovely place and the sinking sun, I eased back onto the road and north to I-70. To Colorado and my campsite.