"When dawn spreads its paintbrush on the plain, spilling purple... ," Sons of the Pioneers theme for TV show "Wagon Train." Dawn on the mythic Santa Fe Trail, New Mexico, looking toward Raton from Cimarron. -- Clarkphoto. A curmudgeon artist's musings melding metaphors and journalism, for readers in more than 150 countries.

Saturday, February 14, 2015

A two roadrunner, back road kind of day

Finding yourself on the back roads, wizened, gnarled, shaped by the years...a survivor
Cooped up from work, routine, city traffic, mild winter blahs. Sunshine, south breeze, open the windows,  get out of the house. Cold front coming.
Time flows past on the back roads
Coffee cup in the holder. Camera phone ready. Not much color out there. Oklahoma drought, mental drought. Roll down the car windows, open the sun roof, turn off radio and turn on thoughts and imagination, head for the back roads northeast of town.
Too many fancy new no-individuality Dallas-Style houses and elaborate gates going up everywhere in the rolling cross-timbered hills, but the farther you go, the narrower the roads, the more house trailers, frame homes. 
The traffic and the noise disappear. You can stop on the edge of the road, get out and take a photo or two, and nary a car goes by. Only the sound of the breeze, the birds.
"When peace like a river..."
On one corner, a roadrunner pauses in mid-pavement, hears the car engine, and gingerly heads off into  the underbrush. The other way up a gravel road, another one skitters across the road.
Good omens, you think, and keep going, finding more of yourself. 

Out of coffee and area roads not yet explored, you find old US 66 ahead. First noises are the motorcycles out on this day, cruising the mother road. The transition back to city life.
Refreshed, it's a two roadrunner, back road kind of day.
Where greening wheat, grazing cattle are the only traffic

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