Many Places One
An introduction
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
When I travel from town to town, or through one nebulous rural place after another, I gather a sense of how welcome I am as an observer. It's largely dependent upon the part of the country I'm in. However, suspicion can grow anywhere an outsider lingers. If I see something curious that I'd like to take a closer look at, I give myself three passes at the very most. By then, the least suspecting have noticed me, and the most suspicious are interested in me. Even in the places I call home, I approach and observe my environment as an outsider.
The great plains are vast and open, their towns laid across the sheeted land like dollhouse furniture on a ballroom floor. People from these places extend an open, stationary hand. Not a wave so much as an admission that there are no secrets in these parts. I see you and you see me. Conversely, the cavernous hills and low pockets of shadowy pasture that describe the countryside of the big river states, such as Missouri, seem to dictate a different, more guarded attitude toward out-of-county plates. Kansas City’s place, as a city nestled between hesitantly divergent rivers, bespeaks the collision of these two geographies.
In the way that eastern Colorado is more like western Kansas, or that southwestern Missouri is more like northeastern Oklahoma, northeastern Kansas geography betrays the plains further west, and instead mimics the sloped valleys and steepened river bluffs of Missouri. This rambling assortment of unique (if undramatic) formations that describe our region make an appropriate comparison to its people, the buildings they erect, and the flavor of their varied aesthetics.
Kansas City carries a reputation with visitors and natives alike as being a somewhat homogeneous place. To the contrary, I find that its outlying regions contain surprises, its suburbs are in disagreement, and its neighborhoods each jostle as home to the city’s ideals. To that end, I suspect the city’s inhabitants offer just as much to discover. With the method I have described, this column will be an opportunity for me to make those discoveries, one place at a time.
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