Beyond the Backyard

July 8, 2012

It never ceases to amaze me, how grand this land is.  We step outside, we look around, we always find something crisp and new, something wondrous to explore. 
I try to teach my children to see beauty everywhere we go.  It's there.  We can hear it with the sound of the cicadas blowing in the trees, we can smell the prairie fires burning wild, we can feel the tall scratchy grasses in between our toes and up to our knees.  All around us is a magnificent beauty waiting to be sensed, and I want my children to know it, feel it deep within.

The open prairie by our house is much larger than we first anticipated.  We seem to have only touched this land with the tips of our toes.

Off we go.

The trail winds up and down, left and right, through tall grasses and wooded trees.  We walked into spiderwebs, pushed aside branches and felt the mystery and solitude of the forest unwind before us.

We even stumbled across a large rock with a plaque marking "The Great Military Road" used since the 1850's.  The Leavenworth and Pike's Peak Express and the Butterfield Overland Despatch carried freight and passengers from the Missouri River to the Colorado gold fields using this road.  It then later became the Fort Leavenworth-Fort Riley Military Road, which carried soldiers East from Manhattan during the Civil War.

It was of course strange to find this little bit of history tucked so quietly inside the overgrown forest near our house.  It is certainly a reminder of how fast we are growing up around our past, erasing hints of history as we go.

There is another one of these markers in town.  It is surrounded by new houses.

It's so important to notice the little things in order to appreciate them.