Day Six – Trekking to Nebraska’s Panhandle

A perfect excuse for a day sabbatical from the car was a freak May 1st storm
that followed me across Colorado and caught up with me in Colorado Springs.
Set with a quiet room, a lap pool, and a breakfast bar,
I planned an all day writing/photography retreat – revival for a weary traveler.

May 2nd and I head northwest, city rolls into country,
cars angled awkwardly in ditches remain from yesterday’s icy sleet.
Yellow road sign: No plowing. 7 pm to 5 am.

I delight in beds of deep purple wildflowers on the roadsides.
Sheep, cows, horses share small pastures.
A trickling creek winds around thick-rooted bare branched tree relics.

Snyder, Colorado.
1st Street, 2nd Street, 3rd Street, 4th Street.
Asphalt roads in the villages, county roads are dirt ruts.
Circuitous, the South Platte runs wild with snow melt,
and snow clumps around fence poles, in the tree thickets.

Clouds are famously scattered, every second grader draws this sky.
Looking for coffee, I pause at the Prairie Cafe in Stoneham.
Abandoned, a sign — “closed, be back soon” — dangles from a cracked window.

I cross into Pawnee National Grassland, though grasses are rare in these parts.
The Grasslands are home to tanks, army helicopters,
I pull over for a camo caravan led by a siren-warning police unit.
Army games and cattle farms dominate my road view of National Grasslands.
With relief I leave Pawnee and cross the Colorado/Nebraska border.

My day’s destination – Scotts Bluff National Monument.
Scotts Bluff, sandstone rising 800 feet above the North Platte,
an eagerly sought landmark by travelers on the Oregon, Mormon and California trails.

And an eagerly sought landmark by this traveler, too.
I walk a rare mixed-grass prairie, listen to a ranger’s  historical stories,
experience her passion for the land and I have time enough to explore.

——————

Bo Mackison is a photographer and owner of Seeded Earth Studio LLC. A cross-country traveler by day, and an occasional poet. This is a poem in nine parts, because the trip lasts nine days. This is Day Five and Day Six.