I was in El Dorado, a town of about 13,000 people in central
Kansas, recently for a wedding. El Dorado is known primarily for its community
college, its oil refinery, and its lake.
Both the wedding and reception were held outside on that Saturday.
The bride and groom didn’t anticipate a change in the weather because it
started getting really cold and windy during the reception. Although no snow
was in the forecast, it snowed a couple of inches on that Sunday morning. There are
remnants of the snow in some of the pictures I have posted.
On that Sunday, my wife and I stopped at El Dorado State
Park. One of my wife’s sisters had her family scatter her ashes at the lake
almost eight years ago. In memory of her sister, my wife placed carnations, her
sister’s favorite flower, on the water.
Not having visited this lake before, I was pleased with its
size and its peacefulness. It was the best part of the trip actually. It was
too early in the season for boats to disturb the quiet or for other people to
congregate near the picnic tables. A part of the lake adjoins the interstate,
and I was only familiar with the part of the lake that contains drowned trees,
their bare limbs sticking out of the water like antlers.
My wife reminded me on the trip back home that she wants her ashes
scattered on the Flint Hills. She has designated a mile marker on the highway
that looks onto the valley she wants to make her final resting place, approximately
somewhere between Olpe and Madison. I haven’t yet decided what I want done with
my body or my ashes when I die.
