Neglected but not expired, this blog tenaciously clings to
life like a doomed raccoon being bludgeoned to death by an irate septuagenarian
gardener.
Here in Ulysses, Kansas, I recline [crunch crunch] on a
veritable landfill of pillows in the Single Tree Inn. A fan of data sheets lies
to by right; at my foot, my tired backpack, sun-bleached and dusty,
regurgitates water [crunch crunch crunch] bottles, notebooks, a clipboard,
binoculars, a GPS unit, and sundry other accoutrements that are a part of my
daily life. And—provisions! Half a [crunch crunch] loaf of Sara Lee bread
shares my bed, awaiting either mold or adornment with peanut butter, hummus,
avocado, or some combination thereof. [Crunch]
(Your puzzled expression reminds me that I should
parenthetically explain all the crunching going on. The culprit is a bag of
baby carrots on the nightstand—or, more accurately, the culprit is me,
periodically groping for a crisp cylinder of orange cellulose. I love carrots.
This summer, I’ve consumed an average of four pounds a week.)
By some cruel twist of fate, I find myself working in
southwest Kansas, surveying those great green pies upon which bored airline
passengers gaze during flights from Chicago to Los Angeles. I’ve been on those
flights myself; I’ve stared at the crop circles with detached horror, thinking
of how miserable life would be among them.
The signature of center pivot irrigation. Photo courtesy of Wikipedia, since (a) I cannot fly and (b) my camera no longer resides among the living.
Of course you know the four Axioms of Kansas. Kansas is hot.
Kansas is windy. Kansas is flat. Kansas is agricultural. A month and counting
of life here has convinced me that these are, indeed, true. However, even
vegetation assessments under the overheated-car-engine blaze of 104 degrees
beats menial labor in a paint lab, or not working at all.
My job, I explain to the uninitiated, is a combination of
off-roading, geocaching, mud-bogging, birdwatching, and quantifying weeds (weeds,
not weed, though wild marijuana does grow rampant through disturbed
areas a bit east of here.) Although the surveys are endless permutations of the
same seven or so species—Red-winged Blackbird, Horned Lark, Mourning Dove, Lark
Bunting, Grasshopper Sparrow, Western Meadowlark, Dickcissel—the occasional
novelty will pop up, like the Upland Sandpiper and Burrowing Owl yesterday, or
the Golden Eagle and Bullock’s Oriole this morning.
