Homesteading

Learn about quantum computing, superintelligence and singularity, we are told. The inevitable is coming. AI has potential to do bad things. But I am too old to worry. I still have Highway 83. Last week Shawna and I spent several days letting High Plains history swallow us.

Once in our nation’s past, western bound wagon trains passed by necessity through the High Plains on their way to a better life somewhere else: on the trail to Oregon, to the gold fields of Nevada, or later, with the 1930s Dust Bowl era Okie migration by jalopy to the land of milk and honey - the promised land of California.

But by the late 19th century, for increasing numbers, the High Plains had become a destination, not just a passage point on the nation’s journey west. The prospect of free land, through the Homestead Act of 1862, had a mass appeal to the many displaced by an American Civil War or the repressive and discriminating governments of Europe.

For the newcomers, the living conditions were primitive, many domiciles nothing more than a hovel of overturned sod. But still they came. Incredibly, for many of the settlers, it was an improvement over the economic conditions of Europe or the post-civil war American South they were escaping.

Once the move was made, a stoic resolve was required. Most had nowhere to go back to, all of their meager resources having been exhausted in the move, their future now startlingly consisting of two options: survive or parish. These 19th century Homesteaders lived in dirt houses ripe with vermin, but it was the dirt of land they now owned. Property ownership was a luxury most of the new arrivals had never known.

Now, their sacrifice and labor could create a legacy to pass down to their children, a birthright that promised a better day. It is what drove them to share their home with snakes, insects and whatever other creepy insects nested in the walls and the roofs of their sod shanty’s.

The ultimate freedom is owning nothing that owns you.