Three miles from town, further than that to a road with more than two lanes, some thirty miles, on a rise above the gravel and the reddish dirt, across the paths that were set by people who wore leather shoes, and hunted with single shot rifles, and would walk this land for miles and miles to gather their fare.
The sounds that we are used to; the days and nights are faded completely out here.
Sitting around the bare log fire, with crackling wood, white marked from the time in the heat, feeling the warmth peel through your clothes like a day of only sunshine could, you listen, quietly, listen.
The Oklahoma sun pulls quietly through the low sky, the trees are still green, but the land is brown, the grass is white on brown, the fence posts are brown and dark, but life is alive here. Birds, flitter and throng between the leaves. Crackling limbs are broken and leaves are crunched so loudly beneath the deers feet, as it stirs from the days sleep. Water trimming down and down the hillside, falling so quietly into the pond, and wind, oh such a slight breeze, scraping the tops of the grasses like water roiling on the sea, and making us wonder again.
No sound, man made, to penetrate the nature of it all, leaves it echoing in your ears.
Ralph E Peck
Photo by Ralph Peck
Akecheta Christmas Tree Farm
North of Hitchita, East of Morris, in the middle of no where, Oklahoma
Comments