Ask whether in 10.000
BC it was better to hunt giant mastodons, and sloths using spears.
Or if in 1000 BC it is was more fulfilling to make pottery and
build mounds and become a little more homebound. Or whether agriculture brought satisfaction
 |
| Fayetteville, Walker Stone house built 1845 by David Walker |
Ask if American settlers along the Arkansas River thought it
worth the flooding and the draught, and the anguish of separation from eastern
culture
And now that all that is gone and the interstate carries us,
the government feeds us, if it is really
any better.
I go to the Ozark highlands where settlers fled after all the
good land along the Arkansas River was taken, where they fled to mountaintop
flatlands where soil was poor and water scarce.
After the best land had been takes, settlers moved into the Ozark Mountains on less fertile land, rocky hillsides and rocky wooded uplands that had been avoided by earlier settlers. Subsistence farms of corn, with lesser amounts of oats, wheat, potatoes, fruit. Cattle, hogs, and corn liquor too.
Ask and receive an answer from the hills that saw it all and
to which I go back.
It’s an old and mysterious country, not grand and majestic
like our western mountains, but slow, relaxed, settled in its ways. The people move with solid slowness, with steady
roots in the land. They get as much done as we do in frantic Southern
California. It seems to me that getting
things done has little to do with speed.
And in just two weeks here the leaves are already fully grown.
ReplyDeleteour steps in the climb
feel slow ponderous
too fast too fast
I call out
as life rushes by
ahead of us
~even here, a slow pace feels fast... oh for instance we just a few moments ago realized we are indeed leaving at 1 am At May 7... but that means we leave for the airport Friday evening May 6 --time going too fast!
Leaves, in their leaving
Deleteconsider only today
and when fully grown
only their work
and when done
their colors come out
not light green
but like children again
That cute little bear looks like a Hollywood star posing in a studio.
ReplyDeleteHow did he/she respond to your presence?
-Muhsin
Also, the does in the background are both looking to the same direction as the bear, what's going on demanded their attention?
ReplyDeleteThis picture is worth a thousand words and a million bucks.
-Muhsin
The cute little bear, Muhsin, is indeed a posing star. He looks at me in stuffed reality from the Visitors Center at Mt. Nebo. The bears here are smaller than our monsters from out west. I wish I could see one in the wild, but so far none have come into view. I heard some heavy crunching of leaves and limbs one night, but it might have been that logger from the cafe following up on our conversation.
Delete