March 27, 2023
Greetings from the naming,
This wide space of world is one that most of you have flown over, perhaps if your book was dull you looked down and saw the green circles from the irrigation, the few specks that are farms or towns, the creases where rivers flow. But mostly what you would notice is the enormity, the wide, nearly featureless plains.
We are out looking for adventure, making our way to the mountains. We chose to drive when flying would be so much easier, but this was the more interesting choice. It is still a separate world passing by our glass, but we keep slowing down to touch it.
The fields are empty now, other than the vast potential. Soon there will be corn and wheat and whatever else needs to be grown to feed the world. But now they are simply open space, made even more empty and anonymous by the snow.
The world froze over and suddenly we’re changed to clusters of pioneers edging across the prairie, gripping our wheels against the brutal wind. We take comfort in our little desperate groups, insignificant and fragile as nature turns the prairie into prehistoric times. We passed many cars and trucks left in the snow, so often it looked like a new commuter parking called Park and Walk.
The highway closed and we found ourselves on side roads, wriggling across the last of Nebraska, coated in heavy wet frosting. We followed our parade of partners past enormous farms that seem to be raising only snow. It felt like weeks, but before the day was half over the snow gave way to the scrabble of the high desert.
We drove through small towns, rarely seeing anyone. Some were only signs, as if left there like bookmarks for someone to return to. They are named Max and Otis and Yuma, most of which only had abandoned gas stations and dried up storefronts.
The hours of driving left me time to think of other things, including the towns we’d passed, the rivers and draws, all with names that were important enough to put on signs, but likely we’d never know why. Why those names?
Massacre Canyon, we can assume a lot there. But what about Troublesome Creek, Skunk River, and Mascot?
It took me a little while to realize what was missing in the hundreds of miles across this big emptiness; trees. I come from a place where all you need to do is stretch out your hands and you will feel bark, and here, they are jealously kept hidden in small valleys or tucked around villages like trophies.
I drove west, wondering how we’d know we were in Colorado, or Mexico, or whatever was next. The snow evaporated and the sun came out, in such stark contrast to a hundred miles before I laughed to myself, wondering which part was a dream.
Funk, Axtell, Minden, Arapahoe. The names reminded me of another town from a day before. It was Petersburg, but if it had remained that I wouldn’t have remembered. For reasons we won’t know, the man running the Post Office back in the late 1800’s didn’t like the name, and so he changed it to What Cheer. And that’s what it is now, What Cheer, Iowa.
It is an old English greeting, one that has kept me smiling since I first heard it. What cheer? What cheery news do you bring? How are you? I love the thought that people used to say that to each other instead of “S’up.”
We bullied our way across Nebraska, this string of cars and vans and semi trucks. In the arroyos on either side, there were scraggly trees, valiant survivors of the tree-hostile world around them. It seemed as if the forest had migrated over the horizon leaving these lonely stragglers. They were posing dramatically, like they were seven year boys on stage for the first time, arms thrown back in a death scene.
Colorado announced itself in the town of Wray. At a place named Wray Café, I paid a dollar to find out that I would rather have no coffee than really bad coffee. The surly woman behind the counter didn’t answer me when I asked her how her day was going, and so I resisted asking her “What cheer?”
The miles and hours whirled by, and I thought of the days past, the names that came and went. I thought of the time ahead, the names that would arrive, of towns and people and plants and food and interesting pubs and of trails and the little nuanced language that changes from one place to the next.
And I thought about telling you all of this, and whatever comes next, and asking you all: What cheer?
Hope this finds you cheery,
David
Copyright © 2023 David Smith
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