Photo by Dennis Coello
Stare at a Rembrandt every day, and it will fade into wallpaper. Habituation, a cruelty of the human psyche. Luxuries, awards, and pleasures lose their zing once we are accustomed to them. Married couples soon need a date night to remember why they fell in love.
And Missourians need a date night with their terrain.
Paging through the lush new coffee table book Trails Across Missouri, I realized that if someone pasted over the title and told me these were photographs from the French countryside, or the rolling hills of Czechoslovakia, or small Renaissance towns in Italy, I would be enthralled—and want to go there.
No need to buy that transatlantic plane ticket—these photos were taken right here, along the Katy and Rock Island trails. I know the backstory to this beauty because I wrote a biography of Ted and Pat Jones. Ted’s father started the Edward Jones brokerage business, which was very formal, very city. But Ted loved farms and small towns, and he expanded the business until it dotted the entire country. When he saw one of the first rails-to-trails projects, he decided Missouri needed one. And at precisely the same time, the railroad decided to abandon its right of way.
What ensued was a long, hard fight. Farmers did not want city cyclists zipping through and trashing their land. Obstacles popped up like ducks in a carnival shooting gallery, and Ted blasted each one, even tossing out more of his own money to push through amenities that would ease the farmers’ minds.
Photo by Dennis Coello
Now they use the trail themselves, and so do their kids and grandkids. Visitors from every part of the world hike and cycle the Katy Trail, enjoying views once seen only by riverboat captains and railroad engineers. Ted lived long enough to attend the dedication of the first section of the trail, ill with cancer and supported by his marvelously eccentric, brilliant wife. Pat was the first female grad of the Mizzou ag college, a fierce environmentalist and an expert on our vanished prairie, working to restore its ecosystem. The Joneses spent large chunks of their lives trying, in various ways, to preserve and highlight the natural beauty of this state.
Dan Burkhardt worked many years at Edward Jones; he traveled with Ted and came to admire his zest for life, his passionate causes. So after Ted’s death, Dan picked up the torch. With the steady help of his wife, Connie Burkhardt, he has since persuaded landowners to create land trusts and conservation easements, preserving and protecting open land. He has crusaded against developers who would destroy forests and hilltop views for commerce’s sake. He has published books for kids and adults alike—he and Connie wrote several, explaining the history and beauty of this area, and then working with Channel Nine on a documentary that did the same. Dan cofounded a nonprofit, Magnificent Missouri, to remind the rest of us of local treasure. He started a tree-planting program, sponsored public art along the trail, coordinated bluegrass concerts on the porch of the old Peers general store.
He wants us to stop taking our lush Missouri Valley for granted.
The Katy Trail is now the longest, skinniest state park. It will soon connect to the Rock Island spur, sending riders and hikers across long, historic bridges and through tunnels into Ozark terrain. Starting in Kansas City and moving across Missouri, up and down rolling hills and through the wide river valley, cyclists and hikers see old silos painted with sunflowers, giant sculptures, a glass studio, and in spring, clusters of plein-air painters. There are historic landmarks (Daniel Boone’s house; Picture Cave, lined with rock drawings and sacred to the Osage; the spot where either Lewis or Clark nearly fell to his death from the bluffs, scotching the expedition). This is the heart of the heart of the country, the place where many of our myths and truths were born.
Photo by Cody Reeves
Look up, and you might see the nation’s symbol, the bald eagle, soaring above you. Or a trumpeter swan migrating, stopping for a rest in the wetland habitats reserved for them. Look to one side, and you will pass apple orchards, native prairie, a Christmas tree farm, and fields tall with corn, thick with sunflowers, or, depending on the season, dotted with bright orange pumpkins. You might see cows taking a dip in a creek on a hot day, or pass a few Amish farmers, or stop under the shade of Missouri’s biggest bur oak.
For refreshment, there are ice cream cones along the way, quaint cafes and coffeehouses and diners, venerable wineries where the French wines were saved when a plague of insects threatened the vines. In Montpelier, France, a statue honors the Missouri entomologist who grafted the French grapes to Missouri root stock. Some of our wineries still have the rosebushes that used to be planted at the end of every row, an early warning system for disease.
You can dawdle at Cooper’s Landing or a corncob pipe factory or Herman Farm, a living history museum where a team of once extinct Black Shire horses pulls the plow. You will end the trail just eighteen miles from the confluence of America’s two largest rivers, and soon the trail will continue all the way.
The Katy and Rock Island trails are a success story: America’s longest rail/trail system, crossing a part of the country famous for its reluctance to try…anything. Seldom do we reinvent and reuse so well that the new version is even cooler than the old. Ted Jones made this possible, but Dan and his many allies keep expanding and preserving the legacy.
He has lived in this area since high school, but he never grew blind to its charms. That is a rare and wonderful trait: the ability to see beauty and take joy in it every day, never growing disenchanted. I envy his clearsightedness, his refusal to be blasé. Missouri always bored me; I had fallen victim to the Midwestern inferiority complex. Exotic had more appeal than wholesome.
Now I hike, and soak in that golden afternoon sun, and gaze across wide open fields, and feel grateful for this quieter beauty.
Photo by Dennis Coello
Read more by Jeannette Cooperman here.
