TITLE: Journal Matfield Station
9/3/22. The midday sun climbs over the roof of the station; the line of shade is creeping closer to me. I’ll move inside soon. This summer has been hot, and so humid. The willow-leaf sunflowers surround me, swaying in the breeze, holding their buds tight in their shaggy fists. They are showoffs, teasing but holding their flowers until the end-of-summer heat. The anticipation holds me every year—I expect them to burst yellow in late July, then through August, and now it’s September. Still waiting.
9/5/22. Drove up Open Range Road in search of Maud Wagner’s grave. It’s stiff sunflower season, prairie thistles and goldenrod. A beautiful cool breeze this morning, bright clear sky. I think of Maud’s skin, tattooed and fully her own, and I think of open range and the freedom it represents. The cows in the road regarding us slowly. We rolled down the windows to talk with one. The family of bobwhites were not as eager to visit; they bustled their chicks into the tall grass as fast as their legs would take them. Also came across two hunters sitting in folding chairs in a copse of dry corn stalks. Shotguns held across their laps. They gave us a reserved wave, friendly enough. I felt bad about the dust. Finally we found Maud and Gus’s tombstones, globetrotting tattooers, such storied people. I marveled at the varied handwriting in the cemetery guest book, markings of tattooed pilgrims who visited before us.
9/8/22. The tree swallows were playing in the gnarled cottonwood, a joy to watch. Zipping curves in the air, chasing each other, diving and gliding so fast I could barely make out details. They stayed near and around the tree, and I wondered what determines a territory. There is so much space here in the Flint Hills, and so vast their migration, so what keeps a flock of tree swallows looping around one individual tree? What determines home, and boundaries and freedom?
9/10/22. This place. This rain today. This milkweed, these sunflowers. Goldenrod, grass and grass and grass—bluestem big and little, switchgrass, Indian grass, buffalo and grammas and river oat. Birds that perch on thistle heads, hawks that patrol from fenceposts, deer and bison, bobcats and voles. Rivers and creeks and watersheds. Storms and skies and weather, wind and clouds, heat and humidity and stillness. All this life, so many variations of living, and yet at times a stillness holds.
Leslie VonHolten writes about the connections between land and culture. Her work includes environmental science, art history, community history, literature, and undertold stories. Her art writing has been published in Pitch, Lawrence.com, and Ceramics Art + Perception, with new work forthcoming in The New Territory and Literary Landscapes. Sometimes she also curates a show or makes a zine. She lives in Kansas, where she mostly grew up.
