Growing up in southeastern Colorado, there weren’t many spectacular memories. But one recurring memory takes me back. Sweet peas in the summer mornings, sunlight shining through the curtains and “Red Wing” may mean nothing to any other person in the world, but to me they meant the world.

The sweet peas bloomed most of the summer in Gramma’s garden against a wire fence Granddad had strung before he passed away. On any given morning, I could hear Gramma tending her sweet peas and whistling. Through the years, I’ve heard that morning wake up call, knowing Gramma is gone. The early morning whistling still lulls me into a sweet spirit as I awaken.

When we recently cleared out Gramma’s house for the last time, my sister moved out and the old place will be torn down before long, I noticed the sweet peas climbing the fence again. Early morning whistling had awakened me several mornings, and on one particular morning, it seemed to call me home. I stood there in the middle of Gramma’s Garden thinking about so many hours spent, swinging on the rope swing that hung from the old Elm in the back yard, picking mulberries from the tree near the back fence and hanging clothes on the clothes line that ran from Gramma’s yellow roses to the bushy cherries that climbed the back pole. We’d spent hours observing the orchard, the growing grass and whatever birds showed up to nibble at seeds she’d strung around the yard.

Granddad’s laughter filled the morning hours and I listened as Gramma continued whistling. I knew the day would end, my life would change and there’d be no more of the dawning memories awakening me from Gramma’s garden. Inside, Gramma’s rocking chair has been gone for years, but there she sat slowly rocking back and forth to some imagined rhythm, her toe tapping on the beige carpet Roxie gave her back in 1982. I stopped at the door to feel my spirit soaring, for a moment, I stood recalling the vision. Gramma lifted her hand and smiled a nod, the glint in her eye promising more… In a wink she was gone.

The dream was gone. I glimpsed the past and watched it flow to the future. I knew it was okay to let go of the property my grandparents had owned. Is there more… There probably is, but it isn’t there. The promise will grow and eventually, I’ll know. I trust the days to be full.

One of the favorite stops along the Prairie Ghost Tours is always the Big Timbers Museum. When tours focus on history the reality of what has been comes forward and we begin to see how the prairies of eastern Colorado took shape, and understand the homesteader’s frame of mind as they settled in the dusty dirt bowl. We acknowledge the trials of living on land that refused to bear fruit and grain, and a place where rains never fell. The process of gathering information begins and we realize the impact this land must have had on the people who lived there.

Is it truth that ghosts still roam the prairies? Perhaps. Perhaps the ghosts are simply figment of imagination and historical evidence of times gone past. Or maybe, there’s a trickle of information that flows over the land, under the electical storms that rage across the open prairie and cinge the grass that grows, barren of nutrients and tough.

Pioneers left their unmistakable mark on the land in the form of trails drilled into the soil as millions of wagons traveled over the Santa Fe Trail, leaving ridges of bare dirt where prairie grass had grown. With bare hands they struggled to tame a wild and barren land with homes built of sod and grass, mortared with precious mud packs made from water carried often for miles in buckets and wooden barrels. Their only protection from the storms often came from the cotton tarps they’d used over their canastoga wagons for the trip west. Once used, their ability to escape ended.

Are there ghosts along the trail?

Come for a Prairie Ghost Tour and find out.

Now you see him, now you don’t!

The beginning of the ghost, warped in time, feels like home. But is it? Time travel hasn’t yet been proven and who can say if it’s true or not. But if you, like me, feel the shuddering of the clock, you may catch a glimpse of Dahliance lingering from long ago.

When my great grandparents arrived in southeastern Colorado in early 1916, I’m sure they assumed it would be their home for a while. I doubt however, they believed it would be home to their descendents nearly a hundred years later., since they had spent the past one hundred years traveling from England, through Pennsylvania, into Iowa, to Oklahoma, and ultimately into Colorado. But here we are, 92 years later, less than thirty miles from their homesteads on the Baca, Prowers County Borders.

Dahliance is a brainchild of mine. It didn’t quite seem appropriate to write my family history as if I was actually there, but then how else would I write it? Perhaps the image of Dahliance, a black stallion shimmering in the moonlight could carry me back in time to those many years ago.

Is he a ghost, a time traveler, or simply a figment of my imagination? The question comes up frequently when I share stories with guests of the Prairie Ghost Tours. I’ll leave it to you to decide.

An early running tour took us to a place called Prairie Hill School. No more than a foundation on the prairie the school offers magnificent views of Two Buttes Mountain, Sunrises and Sunsets on the prairie, and the rolling plains of southeastern Colorado. With just a bit of study however, you can find current residents who grew up and still live in surrounding areas.

One perky lass (now bumping 85 a little hard) shares a tale of sliding down the rail road trestle on her way home from school, after a particularly gruelling day. The boys were sliding down the trestle in their jeans and she wasn’t to be outdone, although her sisters and other girls warned her that her skirts would not be so forgiving of the splinters in the trestle. Audrey jumped and landed on her fanny, sliding down the railroad trestle in her flounced petticoats and skirts, bare legs catching splinters all the way down. The trip home from the trestle was a bit painful, and Mamma pulling splinters from her legs and fanny didn’t improve her disposition. However, the boys knew she was one tough kid too.

She never forgot the trestle, and the boys still remember her. When she meets them on the street in this fair community, they share a laugh or two and enjoy their memories of the railroad trestle on their way home from Prairie Hill School.