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Tip o' the Day

Legion are the numbera of folks who envy Jane and me for the location in which we chose to dwell for the rest of our lives.

"The splendid mountains, rushing streams, lakes, lush farmland! Boy, are you guys lucky!" Then they marvel at the relative few people compared to, say, Southern California, or Chicago, or the Boston-to-Richmond megalopolis.

I wonder. . . .

I wonder if they've taken time to discover what's in their own backyards? Once upon a time, perhaps two years ago, Jane and I traveled through Nebraska and chance to spend the weekend at Rock Creek State Park. The 300+ acre Park sprawls only a few miles from the Kansas border, say, 75 miles west of Missouri. The Oregon Trail passed through the Park, and one can still discern wheel tracks and where pioneers dug away cutbanks to let their wagons down to the Rock Creek crossing.

Rock Creek was also a way station for the Pony Express, complete with an old log barn, log cabins, pole corrals, and hitchracks.

There are complete wagons -- a Conestoga and three prairie schooners -- parked in the meadow by the barn. All one needs to resurrect them would be a span of mules, their harness, and a wagon sheet. Kids can, and do, play on the wagons.

Rock Creek State Park's 300+ acres also contains the only real Tall Grass Prairie Jane and I ever had a chance to hike through. That Tall Grass Prairie is a mere remnant of the prairie that once blanketed much of the American Midwest.

I envy those Nebraskans for their Tall Grass Prairie, their Oregon Trail wheelruts, and their Pony Express Station. I envy them the wonderful Visitor Center they've placed on a nearby hill. I envy the Old West memorabilia within that Visitor Center: the real Pony Express saddles and mailbags, the bits and harness used on the Westerning wagon trains.

Someday I'd like to spend time in the Sand Hills of northwestern Nebraska -- the "Old Jules Country" made famous by Marie Sandoz in her many fine books. Though Jane and I had little time as we whisked through, the pine-covered hills -- actually the Nebraska National Forest -- looked intriguing. Full of history, too.

Perhaps the point of this tip-sheet that no one needs envy another's geography. The truth is there's ample things to see and do everywhere! All it takes is a little imagination and the willingness to look.

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No, Roland Cheek hasn't been in a gunfight at the O.K. Corral or punched dogies down the streets of Abilene. But he has straddled rawboned ponies over 35 thousand miles of the toughest trails in all the Northern Rockies and spent five decades wandering the wild country throughout the West. Now, after crafting six prior nonfiction books, hundreds of magazine articles, and thousands of newspaper columns and radio scripts about his adventures, the guy has at last turned his talent to Western novels, tales from the heart, dripping with realism, and based in part on a plethora of his own experiences.

CONTRACT WITH OUR MAKER

The huge red and white flag billowed over the Canadian shopping center as we hugged the slowest freeway lane while hordes of Calgarian commuters sped home from work.

"Mmm," I murmured.

As so often happens after over many decades with the same woman (at least with this same woman), Jane was tuned to same thoughts. "It's beautiful," she said of the impressive crimson Maple Leaf waving grandly from the flag's white center. "But it's just not as inspiring as the red and white stripes of our Star Spangled Banner when it undulates in a breeze."

Maybe that all depends on which country you're from. Could be there's half a million people right here in this town who would be pleased to debate that point."

There's little question that flag symbolism causes emotions to escalate; Jane and I are no different. Canadians debated for decades whether their nation should even have a distinctive flag and, if so, its design. Their present Maple Leaf flag was only adopted to replace the British Union Jack in 1965.

In our case, the Continental Congress resolved, on June 14, 1777:

:The Fag of the united states be 13 stripes alternate red and white, that the Union be 13 stars white in a blue field representing a new constellation."

After Vermot and Kentucky joined the Union, two stars and tw stripes were added. It was this 15-stripe, 15-star flag waving over Baltimore's battered Fort McHenry during the War of 1812 that inspired Francis Scott Key to write the Star Spangled Banner, adopted as our national anthem by an act of Congress in 1931.

The design of the flag was changed again in 1818 with the decision to return to 13 stripes and add stars to indicate the current number of states.

Some religious sects have tenets prohibiting saluting the flag. And some political protesters have tried dramatizing their cause by burning the flag. The courts have usually held that the flag only symbolizes freedom and therefore may be treated by free citizens as they see fit, regardless of the outrage this may produce in others.

When I first entered school in 1941, before our nation's entry into World War II, one of our first lessons was to learn the Pledge of Allegiance. We daily recited that pledge while holding right arms extended to the flag. And there was considerable confusion when the change to covering our little boys' and girls' hearts was made after Pearl Harbor so we wouldn't mirror little German boys and girls in their salute to the Nazi Swastika.

How the salute is done is really unimportant to me. And whether others deface our nation's flag is, in my mind, more a question of good taste and respect for the values it represents than a matter over whether I should be outraged at their stupidity. All I really know, or really care about, is that tears come to my eyes when the high school band strikes up MY National anthem and MY flag rises to wave proudly over the field.

Maybe there some as would thank that cornpone. But I suspect our Canadian friends to the north feel precisely the same way when THEIR Maple Leaf flag mounts their flagpole.

One's patriotism is, in the final analysis, a personal thing. I choose to think it's all part of MY contract with My Maker.

 

 

Roland Cheek wrote a syndicated outdoors column (Wild Trails and Tall Tales) for 21 years. The column was carried in 17 daily and weekly newspapers in two states. In addition, he scripted and broadcast a daily radio show (Trails to Outdoor Adventure) that aired on 75 stations from the Atlantic seaboard to the Pacific Ocean. He's also written upwards of 200 magazine articles and 12 fiction and nonfiction books. For more on Roland, visit:

www.rolandcheek.com

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