Prairie Skyscrapers, Juniper Windbreaks and Pony Express: Julesburg, CO (818.6) to Alliance, NE (939.5)

The Pony Express line

After waiting through the weekend, I stood at the door of the Julesburg Post Office at 7:30 am. When they opened it, I walked out with my resupply box in hand. This stretch of country was once part of the Pony Express line, where in 1860 and 1861 young riders relayed mail between St. Joseph, Missouri, and Sacramento, California, exchanging exhausted horses every ten or fifteen miles at stations scattered across these plains. The enterprise lasted just eighteen months before the telegraph replaced it, but for a brief time it transmitted messages across a continent faster than anyone had imagined possible, compressing travel time in ways that would have seemed improbable only years before.

Such riders were expected to cover between seventy-five and one hundred miles in a shift, moving through heat, cold, and weather without complaint. The horse absorbed most of the punishment; the rider absorbed the rest. I don’t change horses. I change socks. The arithmetic is familiar: miles per day, endurance gained in exposure. Now, the same terrain carries grain, cargo, semi-trailers and, occasionally, a long-distance hiker who keeps his own schedule on the way to Alaska.

When I consider the Pony Express passengers more closely, I am less drawn to heroism than to habit. His work was not theatrical; It was scheduled. They demanded resistance without spectacle, punctuality without applause and reliability in conditions that offered no guarantee of comfort. Theirs was a discipline of repetition (ride, mount, swap, continue) sustained by consistency rather than bravado. In that sense, the comparison to a long-distance hiker is less romantic than practical. A hiker advances not in fits of courage but faithfully to the next mile. Patience, economy of movement, tolerance of exposure, and firmness of purpose are not dramatic virtues, but they are lasting. The equipment has changed; cultural expectations have changed; However, the demands placed on the individual moving through open countryside remain recognizably similar.

Vertical Farming

From Julesburg, I returned to Highway 385 and resumed the steady work of walking. Colorado escaped. Nebraska opened wide: wind, sky, and unbroken distance. On the horizon rose what I call “prairie skyscrapers”: the cooperative grain elevators that anchor nearly every town on the High Plains. These are not simple agricultural silos, but large-scale commercial grain terminals: reinforced concrete storage containers grouped in vertical rows, attached to elevators containing bucket elevators, conveyor belts, dryers and scale systems. Grain is lifted through the headland, cleaned, conditioned and directed to wagons placed along adjacent sidings. Agriculture here is not so much pastoral as industrial.

In other parts of these towns, water towers stand, sentinels that mark each community. Steel columns elevate bulbous tanks above the prairie, some spherical, others flared like inverted teardrops, others cylindrical and balanced on narrow legs. Their painted surfaces capture light differently than concrete. In the early hours of the sun they shine pale blue or matte white; At dusk they change towards pink before adopting the silhouette. The city’s name is spread across curved steel in capital letters large enough to be read from miles away. Some towers have a huge American flag painted across the length of the tank, its stripes bending with the curvature of the steel.

For a walker, they are more than infrastructure. They are guidance and incentive. When a water tower breaks the horizon line, it marks the distance gained and the distance remaining. He points to the sidewalk ahead, perhaps a coffee shop, restaurant or motel. I lean more into the wind when I see one, measuring the miles to its base and letting its contour carry me forward.

Crossing the South and North Platte

The South Platte appeared first: wide, braided, sediment-laden. Then came North Platte. Long before railroads or highways existed, these rivers formed twin arteries of westward movement. The Platte River system became one of the main migration corridors of the 19th century. The Oregon, California, and Mormon trails followed their valley because rivers offer slope, water, and direction. North Platte, in particular, parallels what is now Interstate 80 through much of western Nebraska, following the same east-west logic that once guided the caravans.

For those crossing in Conestoga wagons, the Platte was less an obstacle than a guide. It provided direction, water for livestock, and a manageable path through uncertain territory. Progress meant advancing along it, fording it, camping beside it, trusting its geography. As I approached the bridge, I tried to imagine what such crossings required: the weight of a cart axle in the wet sand, the pressure of the current against the wooden wheels, the calculation of depth before throwing men, animals, and supplies into the water. I crossed both branches on reinforced concrete with semi-trailers pushing the wind against my shoulders, but the underlying discipline was familiar: follow the line, accept the exposure, continue. Canvas and iron rims then; Ultralight fabrics and carbon fiber now. The century changes. The requirement to support open terrain does not.

Wind, safety belts and “being safe”

In the High Plains, wind is not an occasional weather but a predominant condition. Leaving Lodgepole the temperature remained at around fifty kilometers per hour, with regular gusts pushing higher. Minimal topographic relief allows for long journeys: air travels uninterrupted across hundreds of kilometers of open terrain.

The dust got into my eyes and teeth. I took shelter wherever I could: behind fuel tanks, along the lee side of outbuildings, and under arched concrete railroad bridges. Resistance here is not about visualization but about adjustment, a continuous reading of conditions.

When a narrow green line rises from the horizon, it almost always marks a farm. I passed many of them: farms set back from the road, their perimeters lined with junipers that formed deliberate windbreaks around yards and outbuildings. Those rows of junipers, often eastern red cedars, are shelter belts, planted to slow wind speeds, limit soil erosion, catch drifting snow and protect livestock and structures. After the Dust Bowl, farmers learned that you have to negotiate with the wind, not defeat it. Safety belts do not eliminate exposure; they mitigate it. Rural Nebraskans recognize the force and work within it.

Since I started this hiking company on New Year’s Day, people have been quick to say, «Take care.» It is offered kindly and I don’t question the concern behind it. However, the phrase is repeated almost ad nauseam, as if preservation were the supreme good. We now live in a culture marked by responsibility and caution, where survival is often considered the primary measure of success.

But the Plains suggest something different. The emigrant by car did not eliminate the risk; he calculated it. The driver of the Pony Express did not avoid exposure; he accepted it. The farmer did not stop the wind; He planted trees against it. Exhibition has always been part of meaningful work.

Adventure is not recklessness. Difficulty is chosen in pursuit of something beyond comfort. On the High Plains, that difficulty reaches thirty miles an hour.

So maybe we can give each other a little more room to resist and refrain a little less from “being safe.”

Recognition along the way

Recognition happens here too. A semi passes by in the morning; Hours later he returns, with three brief blasts of the horn in recognition. More than once, a trucker slowed down, rolled down his window, and said he saw me the day before and couldn’t believe how far I’d gone. Sometimes they see me again on their return trip and measure my progress with their own miles.

The engineers see me on the shoulder and respond to my greeting with the locomotive’s horn. The sound is transmitted across the open field as a recognition: parallel movements briefly aware of each other.

By the time I reached Alliance, the constant wind had worn me down in a way that no gust could take credit for. It was cumulative: hour after hour of leaning into something that wouldn’t budge.

I walked straight towards the city. First: coffee. A vanilla latte from the machine at a corner gas station. Then a hotel room, which at the time seemed like a refuge. Only later did I recognize what it was: a dingy room, thin walls, a rancid smell stubbornly clinging to the carpet. The next morning, breakfast consisted of Lucky Charms and milk from Dollar General. It wasn’t elegant, but it met the need.

Now it’s March. Winter has not completely disappeared, but the calendar suggests changes.

First thing on Monday, I pick up the next resupply box, tighten the straps on my Hyperlite, and turn my steps toward South Dakota. The light stays a little longer each night. Spring is somewhere in front of me.

Whether I get there on time or not, I’ll walk there.

Alaska is still out there.