A back roads kind of day

I have to get out...out of city, away from the people and traffic, out onto the back roads.

A beautiful sunshiny pre-spring day..the kind of day that is almost a sin to be inside... if I fished or played golf, I would be, but I don't.
For me it means a back road kind of day. I have to have those every so often. Yes, I grew up a city kid, but have spent years in a small Oklahoma town newspapering. To this day, I don't like stoplights, traffic, noise.

Some days I go east, into the cross timbers and up and down the hills and through the woods.  Not knowing what's around the next curve or over the hill.

But not today...I need to see the horizons, to imagine, to think, to see, to enjoy the wide open spaces, and the quiet. To think about the changes to the country and people, to see a different Oklahoma.

So it's north and west, past county lines, driving through small towns, windows down, slight breeze, no hurry, no stoplights. Peaceful. 
A back roads kind of day. Thinking about Walt.




 
"Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road,

Healthy, free, the world before me,

The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose." --Whitman

Pages of February--Life and death on the wing

I've found a "new" John McPhee.
That might not be fair to Hannah Nordhaus because she stands alone as an accomplished writer and author.
But I'd never heard of her until my former student Lauren Vargas on Facebook extolled the impact of her book, "The Beekeeper's Lament--How One Man and Half a Billion Honey Bees Help Feed America."
I can't keep up with Vargas'  continuous consumption of books, but this one caught my attention, because she used the term "non-fiction."
I looked the book up on Amazon, and a review mentioned McPhee, who is my favorite living author. He writes about what I would call "everyday science"--geology, oranges, birch bark canoes, wildlife, conservation, long haul truckers in such compelling narratives  I've read almost everything he writes. He writes for the New Yorker and teaches non-fiction writing at Princeton. As a journalist, I'm hooked. Comparing her to him is just pure admiration.
So I bought Nordhaus's book. She's written for the Los Angeles Times, Financial Times, Outside Magazine and more. The book grew out of an article in High  Country News. Her writing reminds me of McPhee's, and is just as captivating.
Unlike Vargas who probably buzzed through the book in a day or two, it took me about a week, enjoying every page.

This is a book about the commercial beekeepers who help feed you as they provide bees to pollinate America's crops...and the dangers to our food supply.
Actually, it's about more than bees--it's about life and dying.
Specifically, it's a story about one beekeeper, John Miller as he travels from California to North Dakota with bees, and his, and his fellow keepers', travails.
It opened new world. How honey is really made? How a hive is constructed? Where the queens come from? The history of beekeeping?  The diseases and dangers to bees? "Colony collapse"? It's all here, with plenty of metaphor to apply to humans too.
First three sentences:
"John Miller isn't fond of death. He takes it personally. A few years ago he even bought a Corvette, as if that could stave it off."
One of my favorite sections is about the declining North Dakota town where Miller sets up shop in June, the chapter titled, "The Human Swarm." Having lived in rural Iowa and Oklahoma, this was personal.
Snippets:
"Rural communities, like inner cities, have ceded membership in the nation's ownership society."
"It was like a sepia, soft-focus campaign ad: morning in an America most Americans have never had the privilege to know."
"We cleave to the way things are, not only to hold back a chaotic future, and not only because that is what we know...There is value in returning to the one who loves you, in keeping the family farm going, in living where you grew up, in keeping bees when no amount of common sense and self preservation can justify it The colony is collapsing in North Dakota, but not everyone is flying off."
There's more:
"He worries that beekeepers have evolved too slowly, 'a room full of old men'--senescent, like worker bees that have outlived their usefulness."
Nordhaus has also written  American Ghost: A Family's Haunted Past in the American Southwest. I'll be buying it.

Retreating to rural Oklahoma for fun and discovery

We're going to Billings, Oklahoma.
Yep, after hearing "In the Living Room" with Gerry Bonds today on KOSU-FM, we're going back to the home town of Henry Bellmon.
His daughters Ann and Pat operate the Turtle Rock Farm, a "Center for Sustainability, Spirituality, Healing," "A Place Apart--To enjoy Nature" on the family farm, to give people a chance to get away  from the city, commune with nature and themselves.
Here's the website: http://www.turtlerockfarmretreat.com/Pages/default.aspx
Check their calendar and photographs. They have all kinds of  possibilities for harried people to unwind, including a varied schedule of day retreats--photography, gardening, beekeeping, and more. The prices are reasonable. You can spend the night and see the stars if you wish. A woman's retreat can involved camping out. Check their calendar.
I'm not surprised that these women have come up with this. As daughters of that maverick Henry Bellmon, what would you expect? It's good for Oklahoma.
Here's their blog address: at http://turtlerockfarm.wordpress.com and they're on Facebook. The Facebook header looks like so much fun. Wow. I'm following them.
The first sentence of the first blog post from 2007 had me:
"There’s something about the prairie across the road."