Feeling centered

On a daytrip from Valentine, I planned to kayak the Niobrara River as a National Park Service volunteer. I would pick up litter while floating with Kyle, a ranger on the 76-mile-long Wild and Scenic River stretch. But the weather turned chilly and damp, so I tagged along as Kyle drove his patrol instead. It was a good trade: I missed an upclose experience in the Niobrara but still got plenty of river scenery, sandstone bluffs, and waterfalls including Smith, highest in Nebraska at 70 feet.

The Niobrara has a Midwest accessibility, with a gentle current and many shallows late in a dry year, but also tricky rapids rated up to Class IV. Where we met the river it was about 150 feet wide between forested bluffs—pines and cedars on the north bank, deciduous trees on the south, grasslands on top. Downstream the valley widens and the Niobrara becomes braided and even shallower. It's a fantastic float, though during high-season weekends drinking can be a problem. Many parties (pun intended) tie together a dozen or more tubes to form a vast raft, a hazard to canoes and kayaks.

The Niobrara is a meeting point of forest types (Rocky Mountain, northern boreal, eastern deciduous) and grassland types (shortgrass, mixed grass, tallgrass). Odd species find refuge here from all directions of the compass, like ponderosa pine from the west and paper birch from the north, and many birds are at the edges of their ranges.

Adjacent Fort Niobrara National Wildlife Refuge has elk and bison herds, though no longer Texas longhorns, brought to these parts by early Nebraska Sandhills ranchers. Fortunately I saw the elk and bison by car; the day before, by bicycle, I couldn't take the tour loop to see the herds because they were unfenced and might be aggressive.

The Niobrara runs from Wyoming to the Missouri across dry country, and a lot of its volume comes from springs. The river cut down into the Ogallala aquifer, so aquifer water exits the sandstone bluffs once it hits resistant rock, and feeds the Niobrara.

For me the Niobrara is a find. I chose the 100th meridian for my route, and I'm passing more centers than you can shake a surveyor's rod at: geographic center of the continent (Rugby, N.D.), and geographic center (Lebanon, Kan.) and geodetic center (Osborne, Kan.) of the lower 48 states. But I never thought about the Great Plains having their own center. This may be it.