Dancers in the Wheat

by anesamiller_wuhi6k | Jun 28, 2015 | Blog, Series: Drawer no more!

Summer memories—or memories in the making—become more golden as the years reel in. Here’s one that is especially precious to me, an excerpt from my first self-published book, To Boldly Go: Essays for the turning years. The events recounted in “Dancers in the Wheat” date back before the days of GPS and cell phones. Please imagine a remote corner of the Great Plains with no motels and few signposts. And in case you’re wondering, yes—the title is a deliberate riff on Catcher in the Rye.

…Under a wind-scoured Kansas sky, blue and gold with post-thunderstorm sun, Jaak and I headed west on US Highway 50 into the shortgrass country near Dodge City. Here we turned north to locate an old friend I’d last seen twelve years ago, when she and I both still lived in the eastern part of the state. I knew from letters that Linda now resided on a farm near the Nebraska border. It proved impossible to reach her by phone, but in Wichita, I spoke with her mother who assured me Linda would be glad for us to visit.

As students of anthropology at Emporia State University, Linda and her husband Bryce worked among the Southern Cheyenne and became adopted members of that nation. They choose to live outside the mainstream of American culture. They make their home in a sparsely populated region on land Bryce’s German ancestors homesteaded a century ago. Returning to some of his grandfathers’ ways, Bryce has let the years of “chemical enhancement” fade from the soil and now practices organic farming. He sits on the Board of Certification for the Organic Growers of America. Linda teaches at Colby Community College and manages their unconventional household.

Together Linda and Bryce home-birthed four children and continue to homeschool them, encouraging independent thinking and resistance to consumerism. They have no television and got a computer with internet access only two years ago (a gift from Bryce’s mother). Of course, the children also work on the farm, which produces beef, milk, chickens, turkeys, honey, and strawberries—all primarily for home consumption—as well as the main cash crop, organic wheat.

Despite high winds and hail the previous night, which broke windows and flattened fields on their farm, Linda and Bryce took time from chores to meet us outside the tiny town of Jennings. They took us on a tour of places Linda visits with her students for a class she calls “The Great Plains Experience.” We saw the now-vacant one-room school that children of Czech and German settlers attended through the eighth grade as well as cottonwood draws and upland sites where remains of mammoths have been unearthed. Most prized are remains found alongside stone tools, which some consider proof that the land has supported human habitation for at least ten millennia.

Bryce says, “Half the farmers in this county have mammoth teeth stashed in a box in the barn. What’s rare is to find them with clear signs of human life.”

“People didn’t leave a lot of signs,” Linda explains. “That’s a mark of sustainability—an efficient ecosystem.”

These are controversial matters. Not unlike the Boers of South Africa, some residents here prefer to believe the prairie wilderness was uninhabited when their ancestors arrived. Popular history, which my friends dispute, asserts that marauding bands of Cheyenne warriors invaded from the north to massacre peaceable white farmers. It’s a belief that’s used to dismiss native claims to the land throughout northwest Kansas.

2007 National Pow Wow, Grass Dancers, Washington, DC.

“In fact, they had always hunted here,” Linda says. “And there’s evidence of managed horticulture from before the days of the horse. This land was sacred for a long time.”

She explains that members of her adoptive family make annual trips from Oklahoma to Bear Butte in South Dakota to maintain centuries-old rituals. “When the people come up this way, they sometimes stop for groceries or gas. They may need to find some local plants or special rocks. Or to see a particular place and take care of it personally. They don’t want locals to be afraid of them or hate them when they do these things.”

Linda shares these views with her students, some of whom find the Cheyenne-friendly perspective challenging.

“It’s the same with people who give you bad looks when you start raising buffalo,” Bryce says. He recently bought a pair of the animals at auction in Oklahoma. “Indians are supposed to be part of the distant past. But if the buffalo can start coming back, then you-know-who might not be far behind.”

Linda exclaims, “Whatever happened to Earth Day? What happened to civil rights?”

“People get distracted,” Jaak says. “They need reminding.”

In the course of our almost twelve-hour talk, Linda and Bryce also discussed midwifery, wood-burning stoves, biodynamic methods, and depletion of the Ogallala Aquifer. In fact, they talked like they would never shut up! Like they were starved for intellectual conversation, as Jaak said later.

I kept a low profile. Writing a dissertation on Russian literature or failing to publish a novel didn’t seem nearly so compelling as joining the Cheyenne Nation and advocating on the front lines of cultural conflict. But finally, as the evening wound on, I found a way to capture everyone’s attention, thanks to the charms of Memory Lane.

“Remember that time we danced in the wheat field?” I asked.

When Linda and I were nineteen years old, we lived together for a summer in a one-bedroom cottage on the back lot behind an old rooming house in downtown Wichita. In those days, we were both vegetarians (a practice Linda maintained until she and Bryce began raising their own grass-fed beef). Linda and I also baked our own bread, composted all biodegradable wastes, and picked up aluminum cans for recycling whenever we found them littering the streets of our neighborhood.

We may sound like ultra-serious young women, but when Linda’s birthday came along, we were ready to cut loose. At my parents’ house, in their well-stocked kitchen, I baked a carrot cake and swiped a bottle of wine. I remember it was called Vin Rosé d’Anjou and came in a shapely bottle we cherished as a vase for months afterward.

I refused to drive a car at that righteous time of life, so a friend picked me up and helped bring the refreshments downtown where Linda was due home from work, suspecting nothing. Most of our old crowd was unavailable—working nights or gone to Oregon—but one close pal named Nell was back in town after a year at Oberlin College as a violin performance major. Nell held the rest of us in awe because her family came from Boston and were all accomplished musicians. Her appearance for Linda’s party would be part of the surprise.

I told Nell to be sure to bring her violin.

First off, a mishap. When we got downtown, I cleverly placed the carrot cake—an elegant layered and frosted affair—on the sidewalk while unloading other things from Nell’s car. She managed to find the cake with her foot, leaving a rounded heel mark down one side, like a cookie with one bite gone. I was distraught, but Nell couldn’t stop laughing. Her humor set a tone of high spirits for the evening.

Linda was taken completely unawares. Delight and amazement covered her face when we shouted, “Surprise!”

“I’m sorry I stepped on your cake!” Nell gasped between guffaws.

Not that the footprint kept us from eating it. We devoured large portions, drained the wine, and demanded gypsy music. Nell broke out her violin and played waltzes, while Linda and I danced around our tiny house. When the mood called for moving on, instead of more drinking (back then Kansans enjoyed the privilege of buying 3.2 beer at age eighteen), we decided to drive out to the country.

Photograph of a full moon amid passing clouds

It was a lovely summer night. A full moon reflected off sparse clouds. Nell parked on the side of a graded sand road by a hedge of Osage orange. We sat on the hood of the car, basking in silver light.

“Play another song,” Linda said. “Let’s hear what it sounds like, here in the open.”

Nell treated us to a mazurka. It was so inspiring, Linda and I drifted into the wheat field across the road. I don’t know who started it, but first we slipped off our shirts, then our bras, then our jeans. We glided between thigh-high rows of grain, brushing seed-beards with our fingertips. When she finished playing, Nell joined the fun. Our skins tanned an impossible bluish gold, we danced to a tune that lingered over the field, singing snatches of melody.

I think I was first to catch the flash of a shifting light beyond the hill nearby. I called to the others, “Look out—a car!”

“Hit the dirt!” Linda cried.

A pick-up crested the rise to the east and came rattling over sand. We crouched as low as we could, bare skin braving the raspy stems of nearly ripened wheat. We had danced our way well back from the road, but there was Nell’s car by the hedge—testimony for the curious that someone must be close by.

“Shit,” Nell hissed. “My violin…”

She had left it on the hood of the car. It lay in the open case by the near fender.

Did Nature lead us astray with moonshine drunkenness? Was comeuppance in store for immodest young women trespassing on farmland? We couldn’t make out figures in the pick-up, but they obviously took an interest. They rolled to a stop, lingered long minutes, no doubt wondering whose car that could be and where the occupants had gone.

In spite of anxiety, hunkered naked in the field, we struggled to keep our laughter below the hearing range. At least, two of us did. Linda and I leaned together, shaking with the effort. Maybe I gloated a little at Nell for making light of the damage to my fancy cake. Understandably, she saw less humor with a valuable instrument on the line.

We all peered to see if these were the kind of people to molest a carelessly reposing violin.

Lucky for us, and for this cherished memory, they were a better kind.

“So that’s about it.” I concluded the story for Linda and our husbands, who were hearing of that birthday celebration some twenty-five years ago for the first time. “Once that car drove off, we figured it was time to get dressed. But didn’t we wind up leaving some undies behind?”

“Yeah,” Linda said, “we couldn’t find everything scattered in the dark.”

Bryce cracked a toothy smile. A grizzled German-Cheyenne farmer’s grudging smile after a damaging hail storm.

I was so happy to give him a moment’s cheer.

It was full dark when Bryce and Linda drove us back to Jennings, where Jaak and I had left our car. We said good-bye under the Milky Way with exchanges of hugs, heartfelt good wishes, and promises to keep in touch. From there, Jaak and I journeyed on to Colorado. Further stops on our trip included Rocky Mountain National Park, Mount Rushmore, and the Black Hills. But nothing impressed me like the time we spent catching up with old friends, renewing contact with the ways of life they’ve chosen to follow.

I guess this is the best I can do to account for why I’ve turned down the thermostat, joined a food co-op, and started recycling things they don’t even pick up at the curb. That visit to my homeland, emerging onto the blue landscape of sky over grass and listening for the songs of youth—it worked a magic that gives joy, as well as a bit of a guilt trip. There are so many ways to honor the places we love, it’s tragic if we don’t at least embrace the ones that cost only minor sacrifice.

And then I heard the Ohio Department of Transportation wants to pave miles of farmland to widen a highway that parallels the Turnpike. But don’t get me started on that…

~ ~ ~ ~

To hear a reading of another excerpt from To Boldly Go: Essays for the turning years, click here.

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