The Heartland

I picked up I-35 at Belton and headed north. Up ahead was an obstacle that I had avoided coming in to Fort Hood from the west earlier, the Comanche Peak Nuclear Power Station. Just southwest of Fort Worth, the station was no longer spewing the familiar black smoke of a meltdown. But I knew the place was still deadly, primarily to the east where the prevailing wind blew most of the fallout.

I had two choices. I could continue north and take I-35 east of the power station.  Or, I could backtrack or take Texas 6 northwest to US 281 west of the power station. The first choice meant that I would have to go through a highly contaminated area leading to major cities with the obstacles they would present. I elected instead to take 6 at Waco to 281. I had learned that Texas major highways were built with two lanes of traffic both ways in most cases. Practically like interstates and very well-built. In this case, that was very true and I was glad I was on that path when I passed by a little town called Stephenville and saw the cauldron that had been Comanche Peak 15 miles off my right shoulder. I could almost feel the heat of what that might have been. For 20 miles my Geiger counter registered in the high yellow zone. I didn't stop until it came back into green.

Wishing to avoid going back into Fort Worth, I continued past I-20 and picked up I-44 north at Wichita Falls. I was driving through wide open country rapidly turning back to the prairie that it originally was.  Paved roads and, rusting and breached fences aside, animal migrations had already started to transform what had been cropland and fenced rangeland into semi forested savanna. 

I couldn't help thinking of Africa in the 115° heat of the day with all of the dust in the air. Farms and ranches were set back from the highways. I rarely saw them. I sent my drone to investigate some of them, but found no signs of human life. Towns were small and trashed with little to offer for salvage. Thankfully, I didn't need anything from them. Farms were better sources of supplies: diesel fuel, water, staples and seeds.

But it seemed like every evening the sky would light up with lightning and huge storms would rumble through, drenching the land and, sometimes, setting it on fire, or worse, tearing it up with a tornado. I was in tornado alley and knew it. Fortunately, so far this trip, no tornadoes. I had been pelted by large hail the size of baseballs and hit by high winds and storm fronts that made driving nearly impossible. Those strong winds couldn't turn the heavy troop carrier over--just shake it. The flooding that accompanied the storms was sometimes easy to deal with and sometimes not. More than once on this trip, I believe it was near Oklahoma City and later, Wichita, where I had to wait a few days for a flood to subside across the road ahead so I could continue north.

Midsummer wasn't the time for animal migration. But the highways had become the favored migration routes for all the animals in this newly transformed Serengeti. Not only was the highway littered with the excrement of all of these animals, making some stretches, especially when wet, very slippery, the shoulders beyond the highway were fertilized so well that grasses grew very tall and hid all kinds of animals, prey and predator alike. Prairie grasses, grown very tall in the spring, but now a burnished yellowish-brown, were ripe for fire and a haven for something to sneak up on Charlie and Rocky every time we stopped.

Not only was I faced with animals crossing the road to the point where I no longer instinctively put my foot on the brake when something appeared, but there were herds. Herds small and large. Grazing animals, moving from one food source for another, chose these highways as their best route. Evidence that showed clearly that large herds had moved north and south along the roads I was traveling in spring and fall. In other words, the highways had already become the animal trails of the North American future.

Ironic, because many of the early pioneer routes followed animal trails that became Indian trails, wagon trails, roads, and even US highways. The Interstate System was the first road building project that violated the simple rule of path of the least resistance. The interstates changed everything. I was following the new animal trails of the future along with the old animal trails of the past. 

While still in Texas, I saw small herds of exotic African antelope, Asian and European deer and other animals that had escaped and thrived from safari ranches and zoos. I'd even seen what I thought might've been evidence of elephant from the large dung that I found along one stretch of highway. 

Further north in Texas and Oklahoma, I began to see larger herds of cattle and horses using the highways to move from one pasture to another, already completely wild and difficult to catch to milk. They were being stalked by big cats, lion and tiger. The legacy of so many big cats having been kept by so many as pets and living trophies. I didn't see many of those furtive animals, but I saw their kills covered with vultures by the side of the road. There were hundreds of coyote, foxes, crows and other scavengers wherever I saw carcasses, as well. I hoped that hyena had not survived zoos. So far, I hadn't seen any.

In Kansas, I started seeing bison. They had come this far south in the 20 years since society's meltdown. I expected they had been followed by grizzly bear. There were many more trees, now nearly mature along the rivers, streams and creeks that defined the land. Making it more hospitable for white tailed deer, black and grizzly bear, and even elk. But the fires were relentless. I saw them burning in the distance and crossed many barren areas where they had come through and crossed the road.

     Between large herds like cattle and bison trampling the small trees and the larger trees being destroyed by windstorms or fire, I expected gradually the whole area again would resemble the Great Plains before even the Indian set foot on it without Spanish horses. Now, horses were a big part of the picture. I saw large herds of mustang led by magnificent stallions or mares. Natural selection had a way of creating beautiful creatures.

I took a more northwesterly direction until I reached the Black Hills. Once again, I visited Mount Rushmore, its monument showing signs of the weather chipping away at the four presidents, eventually flaking off their very countenances from the cliffside they were carved on and then plastered over in repeated renovation that couldn't hold up to the constant creeping of water into cracks, freezing and rupturing the granite and concrete.

Crazy Horse, much larger and much newer, was holding up much better. Long after all evidence of mankind disappears from the continent. The image of a native American warrior will be the last one standing. A sad statement for all the civilizing the white man did when he came from Europe to rape the continent of its natural resources. Something native people had cherished and preserved for thousands of years before.

After a week of enjoying the cooler weather of the mountains, I headed northward again into North Dakota and Canada driving as far north as good roads would take me all the way to Saskatoon. Canada had not escaped the chaos, so I saw no evidence of human existence. I thought chances might have been better for those living in the remote rural areas, needing little contact with other people. But the prairie there had also burned. The cooler temperatures fostered growth of many more trees. The whole area was becoming forest like much of Canada before. This time, many more hardwoods: oak, maple, beechwood, walnut, mixed with conifers like pine, fir, spruce and juniper.

Saskatoon was like all other towns--destroyed. Charlie, Rocky and I worked our way westward to Edmonton and beyond. Now heavily forested, we enjoyed camping along the route, fishing in the pristine rivers and observing wildlife like I had never thought I would see. Arriving at the Canadian Rockies was another treat, but navigating a couple of high passes was difficult because snow still remained in August. Two times, the high country snowed us in for a couple of days when fronts came down from the north. But I liked this country better than the lower 48. Thought that maybe I would return to the resort in the boreal forest sometime in the future. A thought that never went away and grew on me with the years.

I ended my summer excursion at Prince George, the gateway to the Alcan Highway to Alaska and the farthest north that I had traveled since leaving Canada so many years before. With winter on my heels, my companions and I headed on down into Washington, Oregon and California again… gathering supplies of food for the becoming traditional, winter, in Palm Springs.