While I was driving with my dad into Ulysses, we passed a massive feedlot. In Pennsylvania, where I’m from, I had never seen such a dense space filled with thousands of cattle. But what we noticed first wasn't the sheer density of cows: it was the smell.
My dad’s instinct was to open the windows to air it out, forgetting for a moment that the air coming in was the very thing we were trying to escape. He realized his mistake pretty quickly.
I had never really thought about feedlots before. I suppose I imagined cattle being raised and eventually butchered somewhere out of sight, in some hidden facility tucked away from the rest of the world. I certainly never imagined one of my first impressions of southwest Kansas would involve being assaulted by the smell of thousands of cows.
Almost everyone knows the phrase “stop to smell the roses,” but how many of us actually take the time to slow down and notice the little beauties around us? And how often are the things worth noticing not roses at all?
In many ways, the stench of that feedlot has come to symbolize my move to Kansas and the new role I have had to grow into: unexpected, larger than I thought it would be, and filled with both pleasant and unpleasant things.
Some of the roses I have found here can be along the roads.
Even on a drive yesterday, a feed yard was not simply a feed yard. Tall metal cactus sculptures flanked the road leading toward the cattle. Cotton was not simply a crop; I picked one of its soft white bulbs and carried it away as a little relic, feeling the dust cling to my fingers. A deer darted into the road, nearly crossing my path before suddenly bounding away into the rest of Kansas liminality. A cornfield was not simply a field of somewhat shriveled crops showing signs of drought, but a field gilded beneath an enormous orange moon, which seemed to spill across the rows. Of course, pictures never do the moon justice.
The point is that a simple crop, evidence of drought, or a near collision with a deer can contain more than what initially meets the eye. There are edges and layers to the world around us that we might never notice unless we actually stop to look.
I have never been a great believer in radical optimism. Sometimes I think our insistence on making everything beautiful, meaningful, and perfectly manicured can actually minimize the things that hurt. Real life rarely works out exactly as we want it to. Things happen that we never expected. Sometimes they seem to redirect us toward something better; sometimes they simply make life harder, and we would have preferred to do without the additional character development.
But I do think we have to find some meaning in what is difficult if we are going to withstand it.
Since moving to Kansas, I never would have imagined that I would build a network of people so quickly. As the face of a newspaper, you meet all kinds. Then, someone might bring you a handwritten card simply because they appreciate what you are doing, while another might call to complain about something you had nothing to do with. Seeing different spectrums is part of the job I have learned.
There is a certain stench to being an editor and reporter, too. The responsibilities can be overwhelming, particularly when you realize that nothing in years of university newspapers and magazines quite prepared you for being responsible for an actual newspaper.
And yet, I have incredible gratitude.
Work and fun have a tendency to blur together, sometimes probably too much, but the job has given me adventures and opportunities I never could have planned. What other job gives you an excuse to go almost anywhere, talk to almost anyone, and turn the ordinary events of a small town into something worth telling other people about?
Sometimes when I call my dad to tell him how things are going, I realize I have spent the entire week collecting stories. Even when I have forgotten how unusual my life here has become, I can recount the week to him and suddenly hear it myself: that every day is strange and different and interesting.
I feel privileged that I get to do this for a living, but I also feel completely naive. There is still so much I don't know, and there are plenty of days when I am reminded of just how much more there is to learn.
I think part of the learning process includes choosing to see the good, retaining a certain silliness, keeping a childlike sense of wonder about things that other people have learned to overlook, and most of all, refusing to become cynical about everything. I have always feared becoming bitter with age.
I have already been tempted, even at 22, to resent some of what life has thrown at me. Sometimes it is difficult not to look at an unexpected turn and wonder why things couldn't simply have gone according to plan.
Still, I don't think the answer is to pretend everything is roses. Sometimes the roses are there; whether in cotton blowing in a breeze, an orange moon over a dry field, or a deer cavorting into the darkness. Then, sometimes there is a feedlot.
The choice, perhaps, is not whether we can make everything beautiful, because we can't. It is whether we are willing to keep looking, even when something isn't apparently wonderful at first.
I think perhaps stopping to smell the roses was never really about roses at all.
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