Look here for Day 3 of Convergence. I had not scheduled anything at Convergence for Saturday and looked forward to a day to choose to do anything or nothing. I decided to go to Botanica Wichita, a collection of botanical gardens on 18 acres, not too far from the hotel.

I started with the same route along the river I’d walked the first three days. I got side-tracked by flags along the way. The Wichita Flag Pavilion starts with a plaque about the first “flag”, probably a staff with eagle feathers carried by the Native Americans as a way for tribe members to follow their leader.

There are plaques for each of these later flags starting with the flag that flew over Christopher Columbus’ Santa Maria. There are photos of those plaques at this link.

The Flag Pavilion is at the edge of the Wichita Veterans Memorial Park where there are 21 memorials. I wandered through and found the Vietnam Memorial. I am just young enough that none of my friends were drafted, but I was in high school during the last years of the Vietnam war. I think that the Vietnam era is responsible for the culture in which I grew up. It was notable that the word “war” is not on any of these memorials.

From Britannica.com: “Congress authorized troop deployment in Vietnam, but, because it did not issue a declaration of war on North Vietnam or the Viet Cong, the Vietnam War is, technically speaking, not considered a war in the United States.” Maybe that is why there was such an impact on us. We sent our young men half way across the world to experience atrocities and die for what reason? We were not at risk, and this “conflict” had no bearing on our safety at home…but I digress.

After I left the Veteran’s Memorial Park I continued along the river path following the map in my phone until I saw the marker for the Wichita Gardens,

This marker was deceiving. It is at the edge of the gardens but as I walked along the path that bordered the gardens I found gates closed. The trail looked as though it was going farther away from the garden. I think eventually I would have found a street that brought me to the main entrance, but since I was on foot I wasn’t sure how far afield I should go. I stopped and called the number listed for Botanica. Amazingly, a person answered the phone. She told me I had walked too far, and I went back the way I had come, turning at the Art Museum and worked my way through a neighborhood to get to the main entrance.

To be continued…