I’m a transplant. I’m not a native of the Cornhusker state. I grew up on the eastern plains of Colorado where the wind blows for a pastime, the grass doesn’t get much taller than a longneck bottle and the rain showers can be fairly sparse. That shortgrass prairie that I called home for so many years still holds a special place in my heart. This past weekend my family and I made a quick trip back home to help my parents brand their calves. There have been some big changes to my old stomping grounds, neighboring ranches have been sold off and sub divided into 40-acre lots, the county still hasn’t bothered to patch the potholes in the only paved road in the school district and there’s a whole lot of faces that I don’t recognize anymore. As much change as there has been, there’s still some constants.

When you grow up on the eastern slope, you have a good sense of direction because Pike’s Peak stands towering in the west. The recent snow on the peak reveals the face of an old man in the mountain. Natives can spot the man without hesitation, we also know that when the peak is wearing a cloud for a hat, the wind is going to howl that day. The eastern slope is a unique place. You can see for miles and miles. At night, the glow of lights from cities like Colorado Springs and Pueblo look like glowing campfires in the far-off distance. With all the growth and progress that has taken place out on the fruited plain, there’s a lot of folks that don’t know all the history that happened on the forgotten side of my home state.

Highway 71 pretty much runs the length of the state, north to south. That highway closely follows the old Texas to Montana cattle trail. Not much has changed along that route, there’s still rolling hills that are covered with gramma grass waving in the wind. East of that highway in central Lincoln County is where one of the most famous pictures of the early 1900s was taken. The photo of cowboys chasing Teddy Roosevelt’s campaign train down the tracks was taken in Hugo, Colo., after he had made a rousing speech in the town. A little farther east, history was forever changed when the Sand Creek Massacre took place in rural Kiowa county. The best cantaloupe in the world is grown in the fertile soil of the Arkansas River Valley near Rocky Ford, and dinosaur tracks can be viewed in the Purgatory River country south of Highway 50.

These are just a few of the things that my home country is known for. Through the many dry years of my youth, I often wondered if my ancestors homesteaded there because that’s where the wheels fell off the wagon. The older I get, the more I realize why they made their home on the wide-open plains. It saddens me to see some of the things that have happened in recent years back home, big cities are drying up farming communities for their water. People who don’t know the first thing about agriculture draft policy that hurts farmers and ranchers, and more and more people learn the hard way about the harsh reality of living out east as harsh winters and brutal summers take their toll.

My home is in Nebraska now and I couldn’t be happier about that, but there’s deep roots in my life in that dry old eastern Colorado dirt. Next time you take a trip into the Centennial State, remember that the country east of the mountains is beautiful too. That’s all for this time, keep tabs on your side of the barbed wire and God bless.

Meinzer is a fourth-generation rancher raised on the southeastern plains of Colorado. He and his family live and ranch in Oshkosh, Neb.