Tag: Kansas Area Watershed Council

Finding Kansas (and That's All She Wrote): Everyday Magic, Day 1049

Finding Kansas (and That’s All She Wrote): Everyday Magic, Day 1049

Posted on
A KAW Council campout at Lake Kanopolis in 1982 with, from left, Dan Bentley, the late Mark Larson, Kelly Kindscher, Victoria Sherry, me, Suzanne Richman, and in front of us, Joe Greever, and behind us, Ken Lassman, Shannon Greever, Larry, and Dave Ebbert

I was lucky: I found a place that made a satisfying click when I set foot in it, and I knew.

It was April 30, 1982, I was living in Kansas City, MO at the time, and I had never been to Lawrence. In fact, the furthest west I had been was KCK (Kansas City, KS). With my friend Ira, I was heading toward the first Kansas Area Watershed Council gathering, just 15 miles west of Lawrence. Ira and I liked to talk, and at the time, we had some weeks of life details to catch up on, so trying to head out from Kansas City, we missed the exit to I-70. We went around the maze of highways to take another shot at the exit, but talking so fast and much, we missed it a second time…..and a third time. It turns out the fourth time was the charm.

“I want to stop in Lawrence on the way,” Ira told me. There was a great band playing in South Park, the fabled Tofu Teddy. So we did and we danced. It was relatively warm out, sunny, and the world felt light and easy. Then we were hungry, so: enchiladas. Then it was dark, and we decided to spend the night at a friend of a friend’s house, a bungalow in East Lawrence. There were a few extra bedrooms, and whoever owned it was out of town.

Climbing the stairs to the porch of that bungalow on that spring night, lilac, dirt, and wonder in the air, I felt the weight of a voice on my right shoulder. “This is your home for the rest of your life.” A click of recognition went through my body, and I slept soundly that night. The next morning, we would get to KAW, where I met some of the people who became my best beloveds for life, including Ken, who became a good friend, then the love of my life.

Cobra Rock while it was still standing

I also fell hard for Kansas, and I’m still falling. Not just Lawrence, which of course I adore with all its artsy, activist you-can-make-anything-happen-here (but you might not get paid much for it) energy, but often-ignored corners and crannies of the state. Having roamed Kansas widely, as a visiting scholar for Kansas Humanities since 1992, and later, as a Kansas poet laureate — not to mention all the KAW Council campouts in caves and fields, sleeping bags unrolled under Cobra Rock before it collapsed or in Hutchinson living rooms — I’ve seen a lot of this place. But not nearly enough yet.

Put me on a long drive through the Flint Hills or even across the much-maligned Kansas chunk of I-70 going through ranges of hills and high, dry places where you can see 100 miles or more, and I’m a happy camper (sometimes literally). Serve me what surely feels like the official Kansas dinner of fried chicken, mashed potatoes, and corn, and I’m thrilled. Add some fresh apple pie, and what could be wrong with this ailing world?

I’m often enthralled with the communities I’ve dipped into even if they sometimes/often contain people who vote in ways that are incomprehensible to me. I have yet to spend time in any small Kansas town without glimpsing some wild quirks and beyond-any-stereotype humans. “Here’s the master key — just go through every room you want in the hotel and choose whatever you want,” the receptionist at the beautiful, vintage, and haunted (as I soon found out) Midland Railroad Hotel once told me (turned out the whole third floor was once a chicken coop that supplied dinners served on the first floor). I can’t visit Pittsburg without discovering yet another bevy of poets, and I’m sure that town has has many poets per capita as any place in the world. I dig the leftover famous tree stumps in Council Grove and visionaries I’ve met in Garden City. I’ve encountered opera singers on the street, abstract painters who took over old bank buildings for studios, and I even stayed in a grain bin transformed into a bed and breakfast filled with kittens. I’m delighted with the infinity of birds that cross and roost in the flyway as well as all other other wilds ones I’ve seen — bobcats on rare occasion and wild turkeys and massive crows regularly, and once, even a cougar.

I love the expansiveness of this place, the big skies that felt and still feel like the perfect balm for my crowded mind, and after many years, 40 this spring, the exterior has infused the interior. My thoughts and thinking feel less compressed, frenzied, and way less tortured than when I first climbed the steps to that bungalow. I’m home here, and the thing about homecoming is that it’s a continual unfolding and practice, a life-long love affair with being where and who we are. Thank you, Kansas, and hey, Happy Kansas Day!

Loving Rachel Rolfs: Everyday Magic, Day 821

Posted on

1958405_706236812756504_3872058871769991797_n
Rachel, her brother Micah and mom LaVetta in 1983

This was a girl who grew up in the background, preferring to help others shine and sing. She was existentially kind. She was enduringly generous. Her presence made all things possible wherever she landed, and where she landed, she rooted down, making herself a sheltering tree that cleansed the air and strengthened the soil.

This was a girl I watched grow up, meeting her first at the Kansas Area Watershed Council in 1982 when she was dark-haired, quiet, and sweetly attentive to the younger kids. She helscan00241ped in the kitchen. She brought her loving ways to all our circles and meals, laughing at the antics of her younger brother Micah and the crazed stories of elder Bob Lang. From that time on, I saw her quarterly at all the gatherings, growing up on the outer edge of our crowd, fully there without tak248581_195740060472851_3679981_ning up much space.

This was a young woman with immense capacities. She could balance a budget and keep complex books for several projects and businesses at once. She could herd a crowd of children with story and crafts. She could make an intricate rainbow invitation of color and fold for her wedding. She could navigate her divorce and new wave of life with grace and fortitude. When Micah was dying, she sat by his right shoulder, singing to him for hours into the night. At his memorial service, she stood tall and broken-hearted, holding all who held her. Her hugs were legendary — the last time I experienced one was in front of the kale at the Merc, and as I leaned into her, I felt enveloped by softness and strength.

10556528_729637390416446_9124468400539768559_nThis is the woman who died too young by most of our expectations of life and justice. Told by a gaggle of doctors last summer to pack her bags and prepare for the end, she politely replied, “No, thank you,” and instead sought out whatever would bring her the best chance to live a long and lively life. Even upon getting her diagnosis, she found a solid name for her condition reason enough for gratitude and had her mom, friend, and Verne dress up at the hospital to celebrate.

In her last months, she sought out healing and traveled from the background to the center of her own story. She let herself be utterly loved. She spoke up about what she needed and didn’t need. She brought every ounce of gumption and grace to the daily struggle of intense pain and a bevy of shifting ailments and limitations. She shone the light on her innate and well-practiced courage, there all along and now visible to all of us as a lighthouse is to ships on the approach. She made her own choices. She embraced language that named all this on her own terms, asking her to breathe along with her. In concert with her wishes, Verne and LaVetta put this on the gofundme site that helped many of us support the out-of-pocket expenses of her care:

This interesting healing crisis/opportunity also provides each of us who know and love her, an opportunity to breathe in love, and breathe out fear. We can learn, live and grow, allowing positive thoughts and words of healing to be gifts to ourselves, as well as each other. What a beautiful gift to be on this journey with such a beautiful warrior goddess.10659262_767838069929711_7467646888006635553_n

This is a woman who took on serious illness, dying and death as a journey into and beyond deep healing. We gather around her fire of courage, her sheltering tree of life, her autumnal garden of blossom and falling, her beautiful face and clear eyes, and say goodbye to this girl, this woman, this beloved one.