Last month, I returned to Idabel for about 10 days to spend time with my mother. Our recent conversations left me feeling concerned about her health. With Easter coming up and a year since I had returned home, I felt I needed to make time for a trip to Southeastern Oklahoma. I looked at my schedule and realized that I had a window of opportunity that would not come again until the fall. I made arrangements and booked my flight.
It was only after, I had grabbed a great deal with Alaska Air to fly into Love Field that I realized that the timing was off. I would have to spend the wee hours of the morning at the airport until the car rentals opened. So it was that I found myself with others lounging at Love Landing outside Dunken Donuts from 11:30 to 4:30 am. So it was with bleary eyes, that I rented the car for the 4 hour drive across the Red River that divides Oklahoma from Texas.
Once daylight slowly announced itself, I was no longer concerned about falling asleep at the wheel. I have travelled between Idabel and Dallas numerous times, but this year, the landscape was awash with color. We have been talking about the super bloom in Los Angeles but clearly it wasn't limited to California. I wanted to stop to take photos but with a missed turn, I was traveling on Farm to Market roads, more scenic but also shoulderless. With crimson, scarlet, violet, & magenta brightening the roadsides, I thanked Lady Bird Johnson for her ecological foresight back in 1965 when the Highway Beautification Act was signed into law.
Once I made my way home and rested enough, I did find roadsides that I could pull over on in both Texas and Oklahoma to capture the beauty of Southeastern Oklahoma and East Texas.
This photo was taken between Idabel and Valliant. I headed out on a weekday morning after I invited myself to lunch at my Aunt Pat's house. I have never seen so many fields covered with buttercups. My cousin tells me that the cows are not particularly fond of them. I later looked up buttercups and found that they are actually poisonous to cattle, so as picturesque as they may be, they are a headache for farmers.
This tree was outside my aunt's house in Idabel. I don't remember the name, it is something long and involves the hills of Arkansas in the name.
Just a little taste of the roadside, here. I have long claimed Indian Paintbrush as my wildflower. I remember walking in the pasture when we lived in Garvin looking for Indian Paintbrush, when I found one it was like magic. Seeing the pops of crimson on the roadside and in pastures invokes the best parts of my childhood.
This is perhaps my favorite. This was taken between Idabel and the Red River on the way to Paris. I love the verdant untamed foliage running along the fence line. There are still raindrops on the barbed wire and the yellow in the background sets off the fence posts. To me this in quintessential Southeastern Oklahoma. Vast stretches of fields demarcated by barbed wire fences.
And this about 5 miles outside Clarksville. I stopped to take photos of buzzards and a field of blue bonnets. This area is bottom land--marshy, untamed beauty. One year when I was back between teaching contracts in Japan, my mother, aunt and my aunt's friend spent the day in Marshall, Texas doing touristy things. It was late on our way back and I was driving through the Sulfur River bottoms on the way home. I said something about hoping we didn't have car trouble with us being 4 vulnerable women. My mom said that we would be OK, because her gun was stored in the door and my aunt's friend piped up that she was packing her gun in her purse. I was quietly thankful that I had clean underwear on. Gun culture is alive and strong in this part of the world. But I can tell you that the idea of being unprotected on the long stretches of sparsely populated, unlit, shoulderless, densely wooded highway, with spotty cellphone reception leaves anyone and particularly a woman somewhat unnerved. My mother likes to tell the story that when the two of us were driving late at night from Golden to Idabel through bottom land, each of us in our own thoughts. My mother said that she was thinking bears and cougars, when I quietly asked "Mom, do you think someone like Jason really exists?"
Here is another roadside view of Indian Paintbrush and other flowers.
And a field of Bluebonnets, the state flower of Texas.
Here is a buzzard, I had the wrong lens to capture him. Buzzards invoke childhood, I spent many a hot summer day watching buzzards circle wondering what they had found.
The next few photos of are my mom's yard. This is a Chinaberry in a Hawthorn tree. My mom, said that I see her yard much differently than she sees it.
I like the little leaf captured here.
I found the contrast of the bloom of lichen on the marble to be compelling.
And I love this one. My mother's neighbor has 4 dogs that I call her door bell. They patrol to fence to alert my mom to any strangers. This guy is called Leon. I was taking photos when I looked up and saw him quietly watching me. I don't think he understood what I was with the camera up to my eye. Once I talked to him, understanding dawned and he called the brigades. I had to go back in the house with the cacophony they were creating.