I started the Flint Hills trail alone, and I spent nearly all of it’s 95 miles alone over the following two days. I started in the dark at the western end of the trail in Council Grove, Kansas. I said goodbye to Allison in the trailhead parking lot, in the dark, dawn still a few hours away. As I walked away, I looked over my shoulder a few times, watching the van’s lights grow smaller. Finally the trail turned a small bend and the lights vanished. I stopped to pee, and peeing made me think of hydration, and thinking of hydration made me realize my pack was amazingly light because I’d forgotten my single water bottle in the van. I stopped mid-pee and began running back to the van while attempting to text Allison not to leave. I did not zip up my pants until I saw the lights of the (not moving) van.
Second goodbyes said, pants zipped up, and water bottle where it belonged in my pack, I began hiking the Flint Hills Nature Trail (hereafter FHNT) in earnest.
The most dominant feature of the next 95 miles of walking was emptiness and, for me, loneliness. I probably will not ever know if this was solely because of the terrain, which is vast and open, or if it was the terrain playing with my actual solitude. I was walking the trail by myself. Allison was working, and could not join on this adventure. In the nearly 100 miles, I saw fewer than 10 people actually on the trail, and nearly all of those were on the third and final day. On the first day, with one exception, I saw no other people between the time Allison dropped me off and when she picked me up 32 miles later.
The western end of the FHNT is straight out of the stereotyped vision of the pioneers’ prairie. When planning my hike, the photos I’d seen of the trail had inspired dreams of hiking in vast open hills dotted with a tree or two and eternal skies. When the sun began to rise on the first day, I was greeted with an uncannily accurate serving of exactly that. Before the sun had cleared the horizon, I spotted an eerily beautiful monument on a mid-distant hill, sort of a black finger pointing up from the hill. Given the vastness of the open space, it was hard to tell how tall it was. With the monument still in sight, I saw ruins of buildings on both sides of the trail. I had no idea what the significance of any of this was at the time*, and that uncertainty mixed with the unfamiliar solitude for a powerful dose of “what the hell am I actually doing out here?” The FHNT was apparently going to be spicier than I imagined. I did not know it at the time, but these first 10 miles were the only ones with this really epic character.
Even after the initial spectacular scenery began to relax around the town of Bushong, the trail remained exotic. The smell of sage was strong, especially when taking a step or two off the path to shoot a photo. I’d opted to use a wider than normal (for me) lens and shoot with panoramas in mind. Even with the wider lens, the landscape was the sort which you know is going to be impossible to convey even a small sense of in a photo. I’d packed sandwiches for this trip, and at one point I was munching a sandwich and looked up to see a bald eagle take flight from a tree atop a nearby hill. He circled over me several times, likely eyeing my lunch.
The raptors get their own paragraph in this story. I am sure I have never seen more birds of prey per mile than I did on these 95. At any given time you could look up and see one. Many were redtailed hawks, which were burlier in this area, whether because of regional differences or the oncoming winter, I don’t know. But there were plenty of others as well: the aforementioned eagle (I’d end up seeing 3 over the duration), merlins, cooper’s hawks, and a small lithe variety that I saw several times and never identified. The dominant character of this hike for me could be summed up as “a solitary walk with a whole bunch of raptors.”
Allison, Eleanor and Josie were touristing nearby and we managed to meet up serendipitously as I was walking a section of the trail which came close to a road. It was good to see them after the day of solitude. I told them I didn’t need anything and a few moments after they left, I realized I had 10 miles to go and a few sips of water left in my bottle. Damn. Normally I am pretty good at predicting my water needs, especially when the weather is cool. But the air was obviously much drier that I was used to, and I’d blown through my water quicker than I would normally. My need was far from dire, but given my heavy mile schedule I wanted to remain as hydrated as possible so my recovery that night would not be hindered. Also, I want to chug a beer at the end of the day, not drink water.
I scoped out the next town, which bore the admirable name of Admire, and saw that there was a gas station. Problem solved. I walked a few more miles, and before I was even in Admire I could see a convenience store style gas station was unlikely. The town’s roads were unpaved. I looked at my phone again and learned that the station was a single pump and unattended. There is a thing that happens when you’re hiking and headed for a town, where your hopes and dreams have a way of finding outlets in the world even when none actually exists. This was the latest in many times in which I’d decided a particular stop would have all I needed despite there not being any actual evidence of that.
I walked a few hundred yards off the trail, following the town’s main dirt road to a community center. A sign advertised free thanksgiving dinner, but there was nobody around and the water faucet outside was shut off for the winter.
I thought “eh, screw it” and began to look for a friendly looking house.
I am not normally a person that will walk up to a house and ask for help. I tell myself that I would if there was a real emergency, but I am not sure what the threshold of “emergency” really is. If I am honest, I tend to think of myself as “other” to the landscapes I am often walking through. This isn’t always a bad thing, but it does make my default attitude toward the locals sort of a reverse suspicion. I was the only person at this point that I had seen on foot on this trail in more than 20 miles.
Maybe it was because of this invisible membrane that I broke when I walked up to the two guys sitting outside that the experience was so memorable. One guy was maybe my age, the older guy was old. Maybe 80s old. They were both behind an RV, near the house I’d picked to walk up to. They weren’t talking as I walked up. The younger guy was standing, staring into the distance, and the older guy was sitting, bundled in a carhart jumper. I asked if they had a spigot I could fill my bottle from. The younger guy said he didn’t, and the older guy offered to fill it in the RV. He took my bottle and disappeared.
While he was gone, I talked to the younger guy. He asked what I was doing and where I was going. I was embarrassed not to know the name of the nearest town I was walking to, but the guy didn’t seem to mind. He nodded his head with a look of “yeah what does it really matter out here anyway.” We talked about the trains. He mentioned that they all go to Chicago in this area, and I told him I was from Chicago. This is always a tense moment for me, as folks in rural places usually think of Chicago as being somewhere between a warzone and one of the lower levels of hell. This guy just nodded his head and said “I like Chicago.” He told me about how he wished he could hike or even ride a bike a long way, but his body was shot. Knees shot, hips shot. He looked out into the distance again, and the old guy reemerged with my full water bottle.
“Sorry it took me so long. It’s hard for an old guy to pee that much fast.” he said with a cackle. I laughed too, and thanked them for the kindness. I was across the trestle over the state highway and out of the town before I realized I’d never asked their names, nor told them mine. The water was good.
Allison met me some miles later. It was good to see her walking down the trail my way, and our long shadows fell far in front of us as we returned to the van.
*It’s the Allegawaho Memorial Park, and the monument was erected as a memorial to the people who lived here and were shuttled west on the Trail of Tears.