Summer dispatches from Marysville, the windswept Kansas prairies and points beyond

The Konza Prairie Kansas Valley Lookout Point outside Manhattan offers a wide-ranging view of the Flint Hills. (Clay Wirestone/Kansas Reflector)

Roving with Clay Wirestone

Opinion editor travels Kansas and beyond for stories off the beaten path. Read them all here .

Summer fades as the nights lengthen, and fall stretches its cool tendrils across the prairie.

I’ve been out on the road over the past couple of months, traveling on Kansas Reflector road trips , a family vacation and book research work. I’ve dripped my share of sweat. I’ve chatted with readers, fellow journalists and in-laws. During a lengthy road trip with my husband, I listened to the first 12 Madonna albums. (“ I’m Breathless ” was our favorite, followed quickly by “ Like a Prayer .”)

I’ve also had the opportunity to mull the state of our world, so here are some lessons and snapshots.

Squirrel spotting

Early last month I visited Marysville, where Sarah Kessinger edits and publishes the weekly Marysville Advocate . We went out to lunch with her mother, Sharon, the onetime co-publisher of the paper. Both women have been inducted into the Kansas Press Association Hall of Fame , and we chatted about Kansas newspaper history.

Another day in the life of an opinion editor working on a book about opinion writers, you might say.

Except that as I tootled around town after lunch, I noticed statues of black squirrels popping up everywhere. They were decorated in various ways — the one in front of the town library sported a library card, for instance — and clearly meant something to the town. But I didn’t know what.

The Manhattan Mercury came to my rescue .

According to reporter Emma Loura: “ The black squirrel came to town after two from the McMahon Carnival got loose in City Park in 1912. The carnival was in town to celebrate a reunion of Union Civil War veterans. A child opened the cage, and the squirrels escaped, making themselves at home in the park. The black squirrel became Marysville’s official mascot in 1972, and the town codified a fine to harming one of the critters.”

The town’s chamber of commerce says 51 black squirrel statues can be found across town. It even provides a convenient map if you’d like to find them all. As for the actual animals, about 1/5 of Marysville’s squirrels currently fit the bill.

Roadside attraction

On July 1, I drove to and from Manhattan for no particular reason.

I was able to make some excuses up along the way. I searched bookstores for bonus volumes about Kansas history, checked out the Kansas State University campus and made sure Aggieville was still standing (thank goodness, it was). But on the way back home, I pulled over at the Konza Prairie Kansas Valley Lookout Point . It offers an unobstructed view of the Flint Hills.

For this Kansan, the view of the hills on that day provided the ultimate justification for my trip. The rolling green plains and subtle hills don’t shout; they speak calmly or even whisper. Yet for those of us who can hear them, they speak an ancient and lasting wisdom.

In the words of iconic El Dorado editor Rolla Clymer :

“Once a visitor arrives in the Flint Hills, he passes into substantially a different world from the one he left with its hurly-burly and carking cares. In the bluestem pastures, there is always abiding peace and calm and compelling beauty at every season of the year. June, with its gorgeous greens, brings out the peak points of their charm — while their lure is ever present and their soothing benediction ever ready for those who are spiritually attuned to accept it.”

Clymer will be in the book, too.

Slowdown quandary

Driving 24 hours during the space of a week, as I did on a late July family vacation , gives one time to think.

Such as: When the vast majority of drivers know that a slowdown has occurred a couple of miles down the road, why do they persist on driving at high speed into that slowdown? The GPS offers other options for their trips, or they could simply take an exit. Instead, most of the drivers did the same as me. We proceeded on and sat in slow-moving agony for 25 minutes.

The traffic slowdown reminded me of all the big problems we face in Kansas — depletion of the Ogallala Aquifer , closures of rural hospitals, right-wing political extremism — and the way in which so many politicians and voters barrel on toward that traffic snarl without a second thought.

Perhaps it’s just too difficult to consider going another way. Perhaps we’re just comfortable with the path we’ve already set forward, no matter how long it takes. Perhaps we don’t mind sitting at a standstill and looking at other cars.

I have to give credit to those who seek a different path. The national Democratic Party, for example, chose to avoid the certain fender bender of another Biden-Trump matchup by swapping the current president out with Kamala Harris . Good folks in Kansas are working their hardest to steer us onto other paths .

This election season will show how successful those efforts were.

Summer snapshots

Clay Wirestone is Kansas Reflector opinion editor. Through its opinion section, Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here .