As soon as the sun fell behind the horizon, the coyotes came out to play. I sat and listened to them chat among themselves: some yipping and a few low-key howls. The night was young.
My perch was a beat-up rocking chair on the front porch of a tiny cabin somewhere near Sharon Springs, Kan. When I say tiny, I’m not exaggerating: The place is maybe 9 by 9 with a sleeping loft above.
We had two adults and a medium-size kid, and that pushed the limits. The size 13 feet of our large-size kid would have pushed us right over the edge.
Mark chose to stay home, but Sara, voracious reader of all the “Little House on the Prairie” books, was keen to spend a weekend as Laura Ingalls might have.
No electricity. No water. No plumbing. Certainly no TV.
My cellphone worked but I took great glee in turning it off.
A bare approximation
The idea was to experience some conditions early settlers endured. Of course, what we experienced wasn’t even close. We drove a Subaru, not an ox-cart, read by flashlight, not candlelight, and carried our water in gallon plastic jugs from King Soopers, not up from the creek in a wooden bucket.
The house we inhabited was built of lumber, not sod, and the metal roof over our head didn’t leak, even when a steady rain poured. The grasshoppers didn’t eat any of our food. Nobody died. Those two facts alone made us better off than most homesteaders.
But you should not mistake this prairie cabin for the Hilton. There’s a futon couch inside, a picnic table out back and a spring that empties into a large stock tank down the hill. Sanitary facilities consist of a “Luggable Loo” from Cabela’s – essentially a 5-gallon bucket with a seat. It was primitive, but still a vast improvement over the cold enamelware chamber pots that the settlers kept under their beds.
Rattlesnakes sleeping
The rattlesnakes, scourge of the western Kansas prairie, were hibernating. Homesteaders used to find them everywhere – peeking up through the floorboards of their claim shacks, curling up in bed with them, threatening their animals and children. We wore hiking boots and jeans and stayed far from any holes.
Curled up in my sleeping bag, a Coleman lantern illuminating the page, I learned all this from Craig Miner’s “West of Wichita: Settling the High Plains of Kansas, 1865-1890” (University Press of Kansas, 1986). Instead of hardtack and dried beef, we snacked on Wild Oats salami and cheese chased with red wine and played an intense game of Scrabble as the mist turned to rain.
The prairie cabin is tightly constructed, with big windows on all four sides. Solar gain pulls in plenty of heat during the day. Even as a cool mist rolled in, later turning to rain, we were warm all night.
With the windows open, a nice breeze blows over the hilltop, dissipating the heat of a Kansas summer day, we’re told.
Plenty of places to hunt
Hunting is popular on the western Kansas prairie, with many stretches of private property posted as WIHAs – walk-in hunting areas for pheasant and deer. The owner wants to encourage the wildlife to hang out in the canyons and treed groves on part of his 320 acres of land. He spent the night before our arrival on the land and woke up to eight mule deer grazing in his front yard at 6 a.m.
We saw pronghorn antelope, with their powder-puff tails, bounding across the harvested fields on our way to Wallace, where the excellent Fort Wallace Memorial Museum is open all summer and winters by appointment.
Two enormous owls live in the old trees, and meadowlarks sing their disorganized songs. The prickly pear produce purple fruit, known as “prairie figs.” Badgers and oversized jackrabbits make their homes in the bases of yucca plants.
Poking around and enjoying the quiet are two of the great pleasures of time on this piece of land. There’s a tire swing and a hammock down by the spring, where a 1920 homestead house has let gravity reclaim it, lying down on its side like a tired old dog.
Piles of scrap metal are rusting away, and a big tree has grown itself around an old wagon.
Artifact grounds
Arrowheads and artifacts attest to the presence of Cheyenne and Arapaho hunters back thousands of years. After a good gully-washing rain is the best time to find them.
It’s a deeply peaceful, solitary place. I’m not allowed to tell you the name of the owner because he’s already told a bunch of people that he doesn’t rent the cabin out. But if it’s right for you, you’ll find the way.
Lisa Everitt is a freelance writer and editor who lives in Arvada. Contact her at lisaeveritt@comcast.net.
The details
Find out more about the Prairie Cabin at prairiecabin.com, call 303-457-0884 or e-mail info@prairiecabin.com. Rates are $150 per night (minimum of two nights) or $650 per week. Bring food, water, ice, sleeping bags and pillows, sturdy clothes and boots.
