A new year presents an opportunity to see things with new eyes.
If it seems like nothing in life here is about the business of changing, perhaps one might find the way forward with a bit of imagination.
Dream the land afresh. Consider every gnarled creek and gentle prairie for the first time, dwelling in its shape and rhythm.
Put yourself in Zebulon Pike’s boots as he crossed the newly purchased territory acquired through Jefferson’s Louisiana Purchase.
Return to a place seemingly untouched, yet eerily familiar. Where what was already home to thousands of indigenous people would soon become home to us.
Saturday, Sept. 6, 1806
The 27-year-old Lt. Pike and his band were in what would become Bourbon County, after embarking from St. Louis by boat.
In the expedition group were another lieutenant, three non-commissioned officers, 16 privates, two civilians (a surgeon), and 51 indigenous people, including an interpreter and chiefs from the Osage and Pawnee.
Their mission: to determine what natural resources were available in the new territory and to foster positive relations with native peoples.
While southeast of what would become the town of Xenia, Pike wrote about fishing with his men at the fork there in the Little Osage River.
The fish were striped and spotted and impressively sized, about a foot long, which Pike took to be either trout or bass. He lamented not bringing a net.
IT SEEMS that Pike and company next ventured west/southwest, crossing into what would later become Allen County, not far from the eventual site of Moran, until pausing at Elm Creek.
Along the way, he painted reverential pictures of the scenery, calling it “sublime,” especially along a certain ridge.
“The prairie rising and falling in regular swells, as far as sight can extend, produces a very beautiful appearance,” he wrote.
Perhaps it was in part due to such beauty that the company decided to camp along Elm Creek not far from present-day LaHarpe.
There, one dreams the sounds of September all around them, the light and colors of fall, when the leaves begin to gently tremble.
One dreams the white-tailed deer tracked and shot there by Pike’s men, its bright red blood staining the naked earth.
