The Last 100 Yards Quotes

I’ll give God one last chance: if at three o’clock this afternoon I suddenly find myself able to run the 100-yard dash in 12.4 seconds, I will return to the bosom of the Holy Mother Church. It’s a promise!

July I watch eagerly a certain country graveyard that I pass in driving to and from my farm. It is time for a prairie birthday, and in one corner of this graveyard lives a surviving celebrant of that once important event. It is an ordinary graveyard, bordered by the usual spruces, and studded with the usual pink granite or white marble headstones, each with the usual Sunday bouquet of red or pink geraniums. It is extraordinary only in being triangular instead of square, and in harboring, within the sharp angle of its fence, a pin-point remnant of the native prairie on which the graveyard was established in the 1840’s. Heretofore unreachable by scythe or mower, this yard-square relic of original Wisconsin gives birth, each July, to a man-high stalk of compass plant or cutleaf Silphium, spangled with saucer-sized yellow blooms resembling sunflowers. It is the sole remnant of this plant along this highway, and perhaps the sole remnant in the western half of our county. What a thousand acres of Silphiums looked like when they tickled the bellies of the buffalo is a question never again to be answered, and perhaps not even asked. This year I found the Silphium in first bloom on 24 July, a week later than usual; during the last six years the average date was 15 July. When I passed the graveyard again on 3 August, the fence had been removed by a road crew, and the Silphium cut. It is easy now to predict the future; for a few years my Silphium will try in vain to rise above the mowing machine, and then it will die. With it will die the prairie epoch. The Highway Department says that 100,000 cars pass yearly over this route during the three summer months when the Silphium is in bloom. In them must ride at least 100,000 people who have ‘taken’ what is called history, and perhaps 25,000 who have ‘taken’ what is called botany. Yet I doubt whether a dozen have seen the Silphium, and of these hardly one will notice its demise. If I were to tell a preacher of the adjoining church that the road crew has been burning history books in his cemetery, under the guise of mowing weeds, he would be amazed and uncomprehending. How could a weed be a book? This is one little episode in the funeral of the native flora, which in turn is one episode in the funeral of the floras of the world. Mechanized man, oblivious of floras, is proud of his progress in cleaning up the landscape on which, willy-nilly, he must live out his days. It might be wise to prohibit at once all teaching of real botany and real history, lest some future citizen suffer qualms about the floristic price of his good life. * * *

TRAILHEAD/ACCESS POINTS Kenosha Pass Trailhead: From Denver, drive southwest on US Hwy 285 for about 58 miles to Kenosha Pass. Kenosha Pass Campground is on the right and the Kenosha Pass Picnic Area can be seen on the left side of the highway, back in the trees. Both are fee areas. You may park alongside the highway, however, without paying the fee. The beginning of Segment 6 is on the righthand (northwest) side of the highway, just past the turn-in to the campground. The CT is visible from the highway, proceeding into the forest in a northwesterly direction. Water is available in the campground from a hand pump, after payment of the fee. Jefferson Lake Road Access: This access requires a fee payment. From Kenosha Pass, continue southwest on US Hwy 285 for 4.5 miles to the town of Jefferson. Turn right on Jefferson Lake Road. Drive 2.1 miles to an intersection. Turn right and proceed about a mile to the fee collection point. Continue 2.1 miles to where the CT crosses the road. A small parking area is 0.1 mile farther on the left. Another larger parking area is 0.6 mile down the road, near the Jefferson Lake Campground. Georgia Pass Trail Access: Using the driving instructions for the aforementioned Jefferson Lake Road access, turn right on Jefferson Lake Road, which is also known as the Michigan Creek Road. After 2.1 miles, where Jefferson Lake Road turns right, continue straight on Michigan Creek Road for 10 miles to Georgia Pass where there’s a parking area. The last 2 miles are a little rough, but most vehicles with reasonable ground clearance can make it. From the pass and parking area, find the CT to the northeast and up a very rough jeep road 0.4 mile. North Fork of the Swan River Access: From Denver, travel west on I-70 for about 75 miles to exit 203 (Frisco/Breckenridge). Proceed south on CO Hwy 9 for 7 miles to a traffic light at Tiger Road. Turn left on Tiger Road and drive 7 miles to an intersection with the drainage of the North Fork of the Swan River. Turn left on a single-lane road for 0.5 mile to a nice open area, suitable for camping, just before the road enters the forest. The CT comes out of the forest about 100 yards up a drainage on the left side of the road and proceeds north out of the valley up a closed logging road.

The Last 100 Yards,” which depicted American soldiers from various time periods closing with the enemy. It was a reminder of our history and heritage—a warning that, no matter how sophisticated our weapons and warfare became, those last few yards to the enemy had to be closed by the infantry on foot. Only the foot soldier could take and hold ground.

Nourishment, though, is not a cure for beach erosion; it’s a treatment, one that must be repeated regularly. Few replenished beaches last longer than five years or so before they have to be fattened up again. Dozens of Florida beaches have been nourished again and again by now, some as many as eighteen times. More than a quarter of a billion cubic yards of sand have gone into the effort. New Jersey’s Ocean City Beach has been replenished thirty-eight times, and Virginia Beach, Virginia, more than fifty times.41 It’s an expensive process. Nourishing a beach can cost up to $10 million per mile.42 Broward County alone spent more than $100 million replenishing its twenty-four miles of beach in a multiyear project launched in 2015. More than a few individual beaches, such as Atlantic City, have already racked up tabs of well over $100 million by themselves.